Posted on 09/20/2022 8:25:52 PM PDT by mabarker1
Some personal history about the Prat & Whitney J58 Engine (SR-71 power plant) from one of the Engineers that helped develop it.
All of you Gearheads pay attention at about the 14:45 Time Stamp.
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There’s a small county airport a few miles west of me here in Ocean County, NJ and a few days ago, sitting here at my computer terminal I heard that distinct , throaty sound of two Pratt & Whitney’s in the distance and when I went to the window and looked to the east , sure enough, there was a DC 3 chugging west to that little airport.
Man that’s a classical plane right there.
Pratt-Whitney is based in my hometown. My dad, was an engineer there. Pratt created some great engines in the 60s and 70s. GE and Rolls are now better, as much as I hate to say it.
“Author Brian Shul on piloting the SR-71 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6nuAZfKSvvg&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D“
Brian Shul has an hour long motivational speech where he talks about his experiences with the SR-71. Highly recommended.
4L8TR
Airman Second Class, that goes a long way back!
I remember taking the time to place ONE FINGER on the front (intake) side of the engine, and rotating the ENTIRE ENGINE with just finger pressure.
To me it was an incredible example of how well balanced those engines must have been!
A statically mounted Pratt & Whitney J58 engine with full afterburner on disposing of the last of the SR-71 fuel prior to program termination. The bright areas seen in the exhaust are known as shock diamonds.
Friend of mine was the RSO in that plane for a few years.
Have you tried a JATO yet?
inlet unstart in both engines, gets yer attention twice as fast...
Good stuff!
LOL 😂
All done with a Slide Ruler.
That would have been Awesome to do for a living !!!
Double Yer Pucker Factor, Double Yer Blood Pressure !!!
“SCOTTIE, I GOTS NO POWER!!”
As Col. Potter would have said “there’s not enough OOOOOOOOO’s in smooth to describe that.”
The engineer was talking about the fan blades were made with linear crystals lining up in the metal so they can measure and control the stretch of the blades at heat and speed.
I’m guessing that the bearings were incredibly smooth as well. Although the engine was only spinning around 8,000 rpm.
yup, an inlet unstart on either side will bounce the pilot’s head off the side
Advances in Soviet AAA in the late 1950s gave Kelly Johnson to know that the U-2s days were nearing an end and he already had begun designing the A-12 almost two years before F.G. Powers was shot down. Without Johnson’s foresight neither would we have had the P-38 Lightning for WWII, which turned out to be the only fighter capable of pulling off the mission to intercept Admiral Yamamoto’s air convoy over Bougainville and kill him.
The engines in the SR-71 weren’t off-the-shelf J58s. The engine as P&W designed it only made 18% of the thrust the Blackbird would need. Only the ones made for the SR-71 got all the high bypass system.
Not sure how much stock I would take in an engineer who can’t multiply 40 times 15 and get the right answer.
A buddy of mine put a 302 into a pinto. He ran it with the factory rear, as he put it, “for a very short while”before he put in a more likely rear.
I’ll bet that was a bit nose heavy ! Probably should have just put a 9” Ford Axle in it to save the time and mess. I bet it was a ride in a straight line
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He had the rear ready to install but he wanted to see what the factory pinto rear did. I think it lasted a week. He also took off the nose, welded it all together and put a hinge at the front under the radiator so that it swung away from the firewall to access the engine. The more I think of this thing the more impressed I am. This was a project car dreamed up and done at home in the garage by a highschool senior.
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