From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #139 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Tuesday, 19 July 1994 Volume 05 : Number 139 In this issue: SR-71 on CNBC from SMOF SR-71 over Denver Re: SR-71 over Denver Re: NIGHTHAWK! Re: NIGHTHAWK! Re: NIGHTHAWK! See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: russellk@BIX.com Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 09:32:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SR-71 on CNBC from SMOF While channel surfing Sunday night, I landed on Tom Snyder on CNBC, doing his show from the Seattle Museum of Flight. The major guest of interest was Brian Schul (sp?), author of "Sled Driver." I didn't catch all of the interview, but the highlight for me was seeing for the first time an SR with the D21 drone attached. Awesome looking aircraft! Anyone else catch this? And was there anything of interest that I didn' t see? (Got to find some way to get to Seattle, though. That looks like one fine museum to visit.) ======================================================= Russ Kay, BYTE Magazine, russellk@bix.com ======================================================= ------------------------------ From: JBLUE@CFRVM.CFR.USF.EDU Date: Mon, 18 Jul 94 12:37:53 EDT Subject: SR-71 over Denver I was in Steamboat Springs, CO and heard the sonic boom that Denver TV reported was a NASA SR-71. It was louder than I remember booms from B-58s back when sonic booms were not infrequent over USA. Has the Denver TV report been verified? I saw Ron's message to Mary, but no reply. Mary? Jeff Blue University Of South Florida jblue@cfrvm.cfr.usf.edu ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 16:59:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SR-71 over Denver It was us. I don't know why it sounded so loud, though. We had a flyover at the end of the flight--about 200 ft AGL right over the building. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... On Mon, 18 Jul 1994 JBLUE@CFRVM.CFR.USF.EDU wrote: > I was in Steamboat Springs, CO and heard the sonic boom that Denver TV > reported was a NASA SR-71. It was louder than I remember booms from B-58s > back when sonic booms were not infrequent over USA. Has the Denver TV > report been verified? I saw Ron's message to Mary, but no reply. Mary? > > Jeff Blue > University Of South Florida > jblue@cfrvm.cfr.usf.edu ------------------------------ From: Per Danielsson Date: Tue, 19 Jul 1994 02:06:40 +0200 Subject: Re: NIGHTHAWK! John Regus wrote: >I don't think that is right about the pilots thinking the 117 is all that >stable of an aircraft... not that it is unsafe, rather it has weird >performance characteristics... I'll have to dig through my grab bag of >comments on the plane's performance characteristics and the comments made >about it by its pilots... But I think I am right on this one... it was the >pilots who gave it the name "Wobblin' Goblin." In an interview published in "F-117 Stealth in action" Steve Paulson told Jim Goodall that the name might be referring to how the aircraft behaves outside its envelope: Jim: Is there a reason for the name ["Wobbly Goblin"; attributed to an article in Aviation Week]? Steve: The only thing they may be alluding to is that if it departs, it departs in a real weird mode and they may call it the "Wobbly Goblin." Apparently the pilots didn't call the F-117A the Wobbly Goblin regularly, since later in the interview Jim Goodall asks the following question: Jim: Is the F-117A called the Nighthawk? Steve: Yes. The interview was made in August 1989 so obviously the name wasn't official, but it hints at what the airplane was called by its crews. ------------------------------ From: Terry Yeung Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 20:36:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: NIGHTHAWK! > In an interview published in "F-117 Stealth in action" Steve Paulson > told Jim Goodall that the name might be referring to how the aircraft > behaves outside its envelope: > > Jim: Is there a reason for the name ["Wobbly Goblin"; attributed > to an article in Aviation Week]? > > Steve: The only thing they may be alluding to is that if it > departs, it departs in a real weird mode and they may call it the > "Wobbly Goblin." I always remembered the name Wobbly Goblin from Clancy's second book, "Red Storm Rising", which included his idea of what the stealth fighter was like and how it would have been used in a NATO-Warsaw Pact war in Central Europe. I didn't think there was any sort of factual info behind that name. Clancy also called the stealth fighter the F-19 in the book. > Apparently the pilots didn't call the F-117A the Wobbly Goblin > regularly, since later in the interview Jim Goodall asks the following > question: > > Jim: Is the F-117A called the Nighthawk? > > Steve: Yes. > > The interview was made in August 1989 so obviously the name wasn't > official, but it hints at what the airplane was called by its crews. Well, from way back I remember listening to a local radio station, KGO in the SF Bay Area, during the build-up to the Desert Storm. The radio station had sent one of their reporters to Saud and he was stationed at an air base where the stealth were being operated from. I distinctly remember him mentioning to me that people at that base (could be the Saudis or the US pilots) coined an Arabic name for the F-117. It roughly translated in the "Ghost Shadow" or "Ghost Whisper" or something like that. Can't quite remember because this was a while ago. Anyone else heard of this before? The report's name was Greg Jarret (sp?), I think. He was also a pilot which is probably whey they sent him to cover the war. - -- Terry Yeung \ Internet: terryy@crl.com Anime Expo '94 Registration Supervisor \ Expo: reg@anime-expo.org ------------------------------ From: Rick Pavek Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 23:18:55 -0700 Subject: Re: NIGHTHAWK! I have been under the assumption that Wobbly Goblin always referred to the HAVE BLUE, not the F-117. :shrugs Rick ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #139 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". 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