SR-71 speed check
One time we were going fast
a small plane got on the radio and said "how fast am i going"
the tower said "you are going fast"
and then a bigger plane got on the radio and said "haha i think i am going faster how fast am i going"
and the tower said "you are going a little faster"
and then a jet fighter was going really fast and talked like a really cool guy and said "hey there, I sound like a cool guy, tell me how fast I'm going"
and the tower said "you are going very fast" but he sounded totally normal
And then I wanted to say something but that was against the rules, and then the other guy in my plane said "hey tower, are we going fast"
and the tower said "yes you are going like a million fast" and then the guy in my plane said "I think it's a million and one fast" and then the tower said "lol yeah ur plane is good"
and then I said "did we just become best friends"
and the other guy said "yes"
you know how some people have a talent for story-telling, painting vivid landscapes and heroic deeds with words and prose?
you have a talent for story-telling, but sort of from the opposite end of the spectrum; you sucked all of the heroism and bravado out of the story without actually misrepresenting any of the facets of it.
nice work.
Not to denigrate OP, but this reduced version has become a bit of a copypasta meme of its own.
Essentially it’s like JPEG pictures: the quality degrades the more times it’s being shared.
Not really, the comment posted didn't degrade to it's current state over repeated postings, it was just created to mock the original by someone sick of seeing it posted all the time.
I'm sorry but this is the funniest comment I've read on HN!
Some people, which includes me, think this parody captures the cringeworthy-ness of the original.
It always sounded so fake to me. Even if someone proved it did happen.
That's not because I don't think pointy planes are cool! I went to a school with an F-104 lawn ornament.
I find comments like this interesting - what is so implausible about this? It’s just a bit of radio chatter, nothing amazing happens, just a funny anecdote that a pilot tells when speaking to an audience.
Maybe because it’s a polished story that he told over and over? Maybe one of the planes was an added embellishment to make the story longer?
The last part is the most plausible- that they would do an unnecessary speed check as a joke to tweak a pilot of a different armed service.
>what is so implausible about this
That's an interesting question. I'm not a pilot, I haven't spent a lot of time listening to pilots talk, and I have no specific thing to point to that is definitively impossible. I have no reductionist explanation.
There might indeed be a core that was embellished. If so, then I think it was overdone.
Real things that happen can be unbelievable; I've had the experience of telling a true story that people completely refuse to believe. But this story is believable to many, so it doesn't seem to go in the same bucket.
Stories that get repeated a lot get tweaked along the way, eventually to their detriment. If something was originally a good story, then it's easier to make it worse than better.
I've spent many, many hours talking to ATC and other aircraft. I don't know if the original story is true, but it's more or less believable. First off: I absolutely, 100% believe that pilots would do this. These are precisely the kinds of shenanigans one gets up to in the air.
The detail that makes this story not quite work for me is that it has civilian and military aircraft on the same frequency. That's now how it works in real life. They will talk to the same facility, but civilian aircraft use VHF and military aircraft use UHF. Coming into a certain dual-use airport we would often hear the ATC side of a conversation (tower transmitting on all its freqs simultaneously, which is normal) but we'd never hear the F-15s, for example.
I suppose, though, that it's possible that the military aircraft in the story switched over to the VHF frequency after hearing the ATC side of a hilariously (to them) slow speed check. I know at least some military ships have VHF capability, having talked to a few myself. Whether it's typical for the particular aircraft in the story to have VHF radios though, I don't know.
>I find comments like this interesting - what is so implausible about this? It’s just a bit of radio chatter, nothing amazing happens, just a funny anecdote that a pilot tells when speaking to an audience.
The original story has an SR71, Navy F18, multiple general aviation on the same frequency. This doesn't happen and won't happen. The military has their own frequencies, their own ifr paths, and their own air traffic control.
That's not to say the military planes cant go to GA frequencies but the story is entirely false.
For reference, this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SR71/comments/2dpmw7/the_sr71_speed... is a story that amateur jet fighter enthusiasts have copy-pasted to every edge of the internet, to the point of everyone cringing when they see it.
Lucky 10,000
Is this the aviation version of the "your call, I'm a lighthouse" legend?
The pilot of the Blackbird maintains that it's true. Not sure you're going to find any confirmation other than that. But it isn't some joke or story cooked up by a random person for laughs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyHH9G9et0
To be honest it's cringy even reading for the first time.
"There were a lot of things we couldn't do in a Cessna 172, but we were some of the slowest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact."
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/e6r7gv/
Lol hadn't seen that parody XD
"in mere hours we'd be out of the sector" rofl
I swear I am never clicking on any blackbird post on any forum or social network again, because this stupid shit is ALWAYS the top comment.
Plagiarism: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/8ya8v4/sr71_spee...
Bruh you can’t plagiarize copypasta. It is made to be eaten by all.
GPT-3 is that you?
later his wife asked "did you go fast?2
and the guy said "oh yes, very fast!"
the wife asked "like really really fast?"
he answered "really really really fast!"
and the children entered the kitchen asking "how fast did you go?"
and daddy said "pretty fast"
and ...