Seeing as the old Blackbird has now been brought into the fray, thought some of you might find this little piece as funny as I did on the subject of groundspeed records - pretty obvious where it is going from the start, but hilarious none the less;
From Aircraft Illustrated March 2003 (I'm not an anorak really);
"In his book 'Sled Driver', SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brian Shul writes:
I'll always remember a certain radio exchange that occurred one day as Walt (his back-seater) and I were screaming across Southern California, 13 miles high. We were monitoring various radio transmissions from other aircraft as we entered Los Angeles airspace. Though they didn't really control us, they did monitor our movement across their scope. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its groundspeed.
'90 knots' Center replied.
Moments later, a Twin Beech required the same.
'120 knots' Center answered.
We weren't the only ones proud of our groundspeed that day. Almost instantly an F/A 18 smugly transmitted:
'Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout'.
There was a slight pause, then the response:
'525 knots on the ground, Dusty'.
Another silent pause. As I was thinking to myself how ripe a situation this was, I heard a familiar click of a radio transmission coming from my back-seater. It was at that precise moment I realised Walt and I had become a real crew, for we were both thinking in unison.
'Center, Aspen 20, you got a ground speed readout for us?'
There was a longer than normal pause:
'Aspen, I show 1742 knots'.
No further enquiries were heard on that frequency."
PS, NW1, get that ball in the centre!