My SR-71

These are my parents, they look like country stars and every seat in their living room is reclinable. It's pretty amazing.  This was while I was visiting far too briefly over Christmas.

My brother decided on less conventional ways of enjoying the holiday and decided to join a group of 50 or so like-minded individuals to swim in the freezing cold sea on boxing day. Literally hundreds turned up to witness this insane spectacle:

I on the other hand have mostly been making little dens around my empty house and building models, either of clocks (reader: yawn) or planes:

My brother bought me a model of a Lockhead "Blackbird" Sr-71 reconnaissance plane for Christmas, although research tells me it's the earlier A12.  I love making models. Usually ships rather than planes (I really like boats) but on this occasion I've made an exception, simply because this thing joins the Yamato as one of the most hideously beautiful things ever made:

Some very geeky, boring and fascinating facts:

- Design started at Lockhead's secretive Skunk Works plant in 1962.

- The materials, paint, technology and equipment used and on board were meant to reduce the radar presence of it to that of a golfball. However, the massive plumes from the engine gave it the radar imprint of a small town, making it spottable from hundreds of miles away. This was largely irrelevant though since there wasn't a missile or plane invented that could catch up with it. Over 4000 missiles were launched against it, it was never hit. 

- 19 of the 50 built were brought down however. This was always due to engine failure. At above mach 2, one of the engines would occasionally "unstart" and change direction. It was said that you could tell which engine it was by remembering which side of the cockpit your head had hit first. The only way to solve the problem and avoid the plane ripping itself apart was to turn off the engines, begin a dive to the speed of sound then use the ramjets to restart the engine.

- A dive to the speed of sound was possible though since the plane had the highest "upper ceiling" ever. 80,000 feet; almost on the edge of space. And the highest of any plane ever.

- At it's full speed of 3.2 times the speed of sound (the fastest speed ever achieved by anything at the time, and still by a manned flight) it could take pictures at a rate of 100 square kilometers a second. The pictures were detailed enough to see car number plates. 

- At this speed, the temperature of the plane was phenomenal, the body would still be 300 degrees celsius when it landed. 

- The fuel used was called JP-7. It had such a high flash point that you could drop a match into it and it wouldn't catch. Not only did it fuel the plane, but it was used as a coolant and lubricant. 

- The fuel would leak out of cracks in the fuselage at any speed below Mach 2. This was because, at full speed, the plane expanded 3 feet and it had to be specifically designed with gaps for that expansion. Because of this, the plane usually took off with half a tank, then refueled in the air.

- The massive pressure and heat would severely deform the plane after every mission and most parts, particularly the nose, had to be replaced or "ironed" back into shape.

- At full speed, it was the most efficient man-made vehicle in existence. By that speed, it no longer burned fuel, just air.  However, the shock cones (the pointy bits on the front of the engines) had to cope with cooling the air hitting the engines so that it didn't melt the turbine blades.

- The Americans realised that the material most of their planes were made from (Aluminum) would simply melt at the speeds the plane would be going at. They had to buy Titanium from the Soviet Union to make it. Then use the planes to spy on them. 

- It was finally taken out of service after it's second career in 1999, in the early 2000's the locations of all the craft were made public.

- The US government, the CIA who ran the plane and the US Air Force still have their lips officially sealed about it. 

- It's probably the ugliest thing that ever flew. Aeronautical roadkill. But good lord, what a machine. 

Here's an arbitrary picture of Gavin to cool your head after all that information: