View From The Porch

Books. Bikes. Boomsticks.
“I only regret that I have but one face to palm for my country.”

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Here comes the boom.

A cool archived piece at Sports Illustrated about Darryl Greenamyer setting the low-altitude airspeed record back in 1977 in his custom plane, the Red Baron, which was a "USAF GE-powered Greenamyer-Lockheed F-104-A-B-C-D-G Starfighter Junkyard Special"
On the weekend he set the world jet record, Greenamyer's plane was troubled by a vacillating generator that, among other things, provided power to the stabilization augmentation system that would help keep him from flying into the ground. While Greenamyer was fussing with the generator circuitry, a college professor learned in the workings of the human sensory system informed him that because of the lag between eye and brain, anything he saw while traveling 900 mph 100 feet off the ground would already be 150 feet behind him. It was not the sort of grim data Greenamyer needed at the moment. As he recalls, "What the professor said, in effect, was that if I headed into the ground, I would never know I had."
You should RTWT.

.
Tam @ 7:04 AM
Share
‹
›
Home
View web version

About Me

My photo
Tam
Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
View my complete profile
Powered by Blogger.