Denver to Seattle

Departing Denver International for Seattle's Sea-Tac International airport. This seemed like a nice long flight, which would give me some time to become familiar with the cruising behavior of this amazing airplane. I've read that it can cruise at very high altitudes and speeds. There's a low overcast in Denver, so I'm going to be IFR shortly after departure.

Airborne and climbing fast! I'm glad to be done dealing with the simulator's experimental model problem with this aircraft. The overcast layer wasn't very thick, or at least the SR-71's fast climb made short work of climbing through it.

Looking back at the Denver area, from above the clouds. The SR-71 sure does have a distinct cross-section.

Still climbing, and not very high yet, but the profile view of the SR-71 in flight, with the afterburners on, looks so cool. I was treated to a view of an SR-71 in flight below me one time, when flying to Fox field in Lancaster, CA to visit family. While descending into the area, I overflew Palmdale airport just above the airport traffic area, and was so excited to see an SR-71 taking off below me, with a T-38 chase plane flying formation.

There must be a trick to getting the SR-71 to go high and fast. While attempting to climb, I couldn't get this beast much above 40,000 feet, with the airspeed hanging in the range of 300-400 knots. There's an old saying about being "behind the power curve," and I learned exactly what that means, in my Commercial Pilot Ground School class at Mesa College back in the late 70s. It seemed clear that was happening, but I wasn't sure how to safely get past it, so I contented myself with cruising to Seattle at 40,000 feet and 400 knots, while experimenting with the autopilot, and setting up the NAV and COM radios for a possible instrument approach.

Descending toward the Seattle area, over the Cascade mountains. The broken cloud layer will require an instrument approach, after all. I'm planning the ILS approach to Sea-Tac runway 16L. This aircraft doesn't have any sophisticated avionics, which takes me back to the IFR basics. I guess I'm lucky, to have a single VHF navigation receiver, that is capable of receiving and displaying the ILS localizer and glideslope signals, so I can navigate myself safely down through the clouds to the airport, while carefully watching the power setting and airspeed. This speed demon does slow down eventually, after power is reduced, by the delay is so pronounced, it's easy to get distracted by flying the approach, and lose track of the fact that it's finally slowing, and needs power added back in, to avoid getting too slow.

Safely on the ground at Sea-Tac airport. Whew! I'm still not used to landing this aircraft. I know I need to pop the drag chute after touching down, but touching down smoothly, moving the throttles to idle, and keeping the plane lined up with the runway, while reaching around for the drag chute handle, will take a little more experience in this plane than I currently have, before it feels comfortable.

I taxied around the airport a little, until I found a cool spot by some hangars, where there were some rolling ladders arranged perfectly, to allow me to climb out of the plane, and carefully snuck in between them. Hooray - a successful flight!