WDYWFM

HeyYou` has the unique honor of being the only bot to ever fly in a SR-71 Blackbird spy plane and wear the Mach 3 pin.



For close to 40 years, the CIA, US Air Force, and NASA have used the Blackbird aircraft for various types of missions and research. Most recently NASA and Lockheed-Martin Skunkworks have used tail number 844 for the LASRE experiment. This was a testbed for the engines for the newest space vehicle - the X33 VentureStar.



This aircraft flies in excess of Mach 3 (that is three times the speed of sound or over 2000 mph) and at an altitude in excess of 80,000 feet (the actual flight parameters are still classified). To give you some idea of the speed, imagine this -- If you fired a 30-06 high powered rifle from the United State's west coast and it maintained it's highest speed and traveled to the east coast, and at the same time an SR-71 was at cruise speed and was traveling the same course - the Blackbird would make it to the finish line first. This plane holds numerous world records (and of course unofficial records) including the west to east coast flight time of 68 minutes (and yes, it could have gone faster yet).


In October of 1998 NASA test pilot Ed Schneider agreed to take HeyYou` on the final SR-71 flight of this project. On HeyYou's disc was a listing of the many of #PinkFloyd&Co.'s regular visitors.

There are very few people in the world who can say they have flown in this airplane. Now those people - in their own way - were able to say that they too have flown on the plane and to have been there during the testing of the next generation space shuttle's linear aerospike engines.

You were there when history was made!



The next time the plane was flown was the final flight by NASA in the summer of 1999. Arrangements were made to take HeyYou` and the list of channel people along on this flight as well.


On October 9 and 10, 1999 at the Edwards AFB Air Show, the SR-71 (844) will make two Mach 3 passes. After this the plane will be put in storage for an extended period of time - quite probably never to fly again.

Over the last six months, HeyYou` has been watching who comes into the IRC channel and adding these people to his list. Drivebys, bots, troublemakers, and certain others have been weeded from the list. This new list has been sent to the support crew of the SR-71 and is now on board the aircraft for the final two flights of this amazing aircraft.

You too are now part of History!



Thank you for frequenting the channel and making it one of the best on the Undernet. This is just one way I wish to show my appreciation to you.

                     Fingel and HeyYou`