Great videos here, I particularly enjoyed number 2 - Take off, touch & go, landing.
Love the 'Black is Black' music - very apt! And what about the acceleration of the SR compared to the camera ship on the go around!
Truly one of the greatest aircraft ever designed!
I can relate a story second hand from a colleague who was a former SR pilot...
He was flying missions over a foreign land after an 'event' in the 1980s. On one such mission after departing the target area and heading back out towards a refuel, he became partially hypoxic and consequently started his decel late, leaving him in danger of overshooting the tanker.
On a tanker join up, as with most 'tanker tracks', the KC-135Qs would fly a racetrack pattern with an extended final base leg to the intended tanker track before turning onto the final heading ahead of the SR which would catch up and plug in.
In this case, the RSO radioed ahead to the tankers to ask them to make their turn off base early and extend as much as they could, otherwise the SR was going to fly right by them. By this time, the pilot was back 'with us' and began a series of long S-turns to try to bleed off speed and altitude.
Unfortunately the early turn put the tankers on a direct course for a storm. When the aircraft plugged in and the tanker boomer was able to talk to the SR crew, he had a squeaky voice. It turns out the tanker had blown a windscreen in the storm and the whole crew was on oxygen, but they'd stayed and tanked the SR as requested.
Apparently that tanker crew couldn't buy a drink back at the Det for a week!
Cheers
Magoo