Groundspeed Records

[Whisky]

Hi all,

I’ve just started a new website about “Commercial Aircraft Groundspeed Records”.
It contains a database of most common aircraft and it’s current “Groundspeed Record” caught on camera.

Ever had that feeling of having that perfect tailwind resulting in such a high groundspeed that you were thinking: "I wonder if anyone has ever flown this fast?"
Well, this is the way to find out!

Take a picture of that special moment and share it with us so we can all enjoy it.

We’ll put it into a database together with some more information, maybe even a personal note of yourself about that day, and let's see when (or if) anyone will ever be able to improve your speed record.

Check it out at http://www.speedrecords.tk

Enjoy,
Whisky

[Massey1Bravo]

Go and ask 18-wheeler, I'm sure he will be able to help you. http://64.207.13.28/mysmilies/otn/realhappy/biggrin.gif

[witchdoctor]

Hard to beat Ryanair taxiing to/from the gate.:eek:

[dmdrewitt]

Great idea for a website! Let's hope people get their digital cameras out and submit the pics!

[Specnut727]

Thanks Whisky, the website is great. It'll be even better when more of the blank spaces get filled in.

If someone betters an earlier record, will it be possible to show the best 3 or 4 for each aircraft type, so we don't lose the history ?

Also, would anyone like to see the MINIMUM ground speed records (at cruise) as well ? Anyone unfortunate enough to be pushing into a 150 kt head wind would have plenty of time to take a pic !!

[Whisky]

Thanks for the positive comments guys, great to hear that you all like it.

Yes Specnut, I was thinking about showing the top 3 or so per type. It would be fun if the guys would sent some more information together with the pictures as well, like some have done already. Should be great reading material.
We'll see what we can come up with all together.

And yes, there are to many empty spaces at the moment. Therefore I would like to ask you all, if you have a picture of your instruments where the groundspeed is readable, even when it is nothing spectaculair, to sent those pictures in as well, just to make a start.

Come on guys!!

Greetings,
Whisky

p.s. If someone has pictures, like Specnut mentions, of mega headwinds, feel free to sent them as well. I'll create a special page for those pictures..... that's gonna be fun. ;)

[Tinstaafl]

I've had 220kts in an Islander. That was a radar g/s. Don't suppose I'll be so fortunate again...

[DOC.400]

188kts in a Robin DR400 -Gloucester -Elstree in thirty minutes, probably ten of those minutes on finals!!

DOC

[Onan the Clumsy]

No picture but 256 knots on descent with a 30kt tailwind in a Cessna 402!

Is descent ok? You never mentioned that it had to be at cruise.

[Sheep Guts]

What about DHC-2,-3,-4,-5,-6 . Had 180KTS in an Otter at 1000 FT level and the same in a C206 . Also 270kts in a C90 on Decent but cant back up with Photos.


Good Idea

Good for Big Iron drivers

Regards
Sheep

[411A]

728 knots, FUK-NRT, Tristar -500 (.84IMN), FL410

[pigboat]

412 kt YYZ - YZV G159 FL270.
The boss came up front, took a look at the DME and said we'd have no need of our Hawker as long as we could keep the G1 going eastbound.

[Check 6]

605 Kts in a Lear 24B Monterey to Tucson @ .80M FL390.

[2daddies]

401 Knots Ground Speed in a B1900D.

Sector was Roma to Brisbane at FL250. I think the schedule allowed 60 minutes block to block and we did it in 42 minutes.

Going out there was a bit annoying, though! :*

[ATPMBA]

600 knots in a Lear Jet 23 eastbound over Winslow, Arizona at FL 41.0
:cool:

[eyeinthesky]

QUOTE

600 knots in a Lear Jet 23 eastbound over Winslow, Arizona at FL 41.0

UNQUOTE

600 kts at 4100ft... That's not bad going, even for a Lear!!;)

210kts G/S for an IAS of 120kts at 1500ft on traffic patrol...:cool:

[18-Wheeler]

Out of Narita to Nadi in Fiji, just at top of climb we hit 698kts G/S.
It made up for the 330kts G/S on the way in! :D

Anyway, here's the fastest I've gone in level flight in anything -
http://www.billzilla.org/reallyhighmach.jpg

Mach 0.915, hand flown whilst taking the picture. The plane started to nod up & down slowly past about 0.9 odd ....

[BLK 33]

Jeez eyeinthesky - what the hell were you following!
It didn't have a Mr Schumacher driving I suppose?

[eyeinthesky]

Just a windy day around ol' London Town:D

G/S was about 45 kts coming back!

[Carbon Life Form]

701 knots enroute CLE-LGW B757-200, returning the next day our initial groundspeed was 270kts at FL350 lots of 'insufficient fuel' messages!

[Fil]

Seen 150Kts @FL250 in an A319

IAS 190
TAS 250
Wind 100 on the nose
G/s 150.

The a/c that was 1000 ft above and about 10 miles behind had almost completed one complete hold by the time we arrived beneath it.

[Dr. Bunsen Honeydew]

261 kts cruise in a Trislander :D (but also -6 kt for a while in the climbout on the way home:( )

[Check 6]

-20 Kts ground speed in a Hughes 269 helicopter.

;)

[Ozgrade3]

235 knts grounds speed as registered by the SFO DME at 12,000 feet going from lake Tahoe to San Francisco a few years ago in Duchess.

[4T winks]

Once had 417 GS in a BE20 from UTTT to UBBB at F280, picked up the jetstream that happened to be going my way, desent was interesting, power off, nose down VSI off clock and controler even asked if i could reduce GS.... :eek: UBBB was interesting, passing 1500m encountered the worse turbulance, windshear and icing I ever had. wind went from aprox 280 to 020 in about 1000 ft, ILS to minima and wind on landing around 60kts gusting 70 straight off the caspian sea, made one of the shortest landings ever in a kingair... As for the way home, well what you win on one you lose on the other....:cool:

[MaxBlow]

637 A300B4 eastbound to Cairo. Will try and find the picture
and send to you.

[airmen]

500 kts over Germany @ FL310 on a Saab 2000:O

[NW1]

http://bedsidemanor.users.btopenworld.com/images/pic1.jpg

[Whisky]

Thanks NW1, I was waiting for that one.....

[Col. Walter E. Kurtz]

NW - Hard to argue with that!

[NW1]

Here's the other half of the story......http://bedsidemanor.users.btopenworld.com/images/pic2.jpg
Interesting how big the envelope still is up here: the minimum IAS is 300kts which is all of 183kts less than currently indicated.....

[Fodgett]

It would be nice to have more aircraft types included in the database, such as business jets, military aircraft and small commuters.

[777AV8R]

StarDate: 24 Nov 02 777-200 NRT - SFO 711 Kts

I beat that about a week later, but didn't enter it in my log book. Great idea for a site...this should add some 'fun-flavour' to things for a change!

[18-Wheeler]

I flew with a guy yesterday that blows us all away - He's an ex-Boeing test pilot, and has flown a 747-400 to Mach 1.05 in a dive.
I don't know what the groundspeed was, but it was no doubt pretty high ....

[White Knight]

A little over 500 kts at FL 250 in an ATR72 from Cork to Gatwick (that's eastbound for those of you unfamiliar with europe), I'd have to dig an old logbook out to confirm the actual speed but London ATCC kept asking us to confirm our aircraft type:D :D :D

[wondering]

Any military guys care to comment? Like SR-71 drivers. Or are those numbers still classified? In any case, 1184kt GS looks pretty fast to most of us.

Once a while, I get to see a Concorde T/O in Paris. What can I say, she stands way above every other cilvilian airliner.

[Whisky]

Well, the site is coming together nicely as pictures are being send in on a regular base.
Just wanted to bring this thread back to the top again. ;)

Keep 'm coming!

Whisky

[18-Wheeler]

I've got a copy of that flight manual, BIK_116.80, and it seems to be pretty authentic indeed.

BTW, I checked up on that guy that reckoned he'd taken a 747-400 up to mach 1.05 from a guy that really does work at Boeing, and he asked around and no-one there has ever heard of him.

[Whisky]

:D :D :D :D

Well 18-Wheeler, those guys always tell the "best" stories, don't they?
I'm sure you will ask him again next time when you fly with him? :E

Would like to see the look of his face........

[witchdoctor]

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!

[Braking Action Unreliable]

Did 216KT in a Seneca II on IR flying Cardiff - Gloucester, suppose it was first MTW encounter, other than "Meteorology for Pilots" :D

[timzsta]

Flew from LAX to LHR as a punter about 15 months ago in a BA747-400. 9 hrs 30 airborne. At one point our groundspeed on the inflight cabin things was 1300km/h (701 kts). St Johns to Lands End in 4 hours.

I saw a programme on the SR 71 recently. This bloke told a story of when they were flying over Libya post the air raids. A SAM was fired at them, they opened the throttle and out run it. No that must have been fast....

Back in the days when I was in the Navy as a "Freddie" I was sat controlling an FRA Falcon target tower in the south coast exercise areas from onboard a Type 42 (real warriors ships, air defenders rule frigate faggots). The Air France concorde made his usual morning appearance".
"Broadway 21, traffic SE, 25 tracks west, high, fast, concorde".
"Traffic in sight, trailing, do you have his groundspeed".
"600 knots".
"We can do that"
"Yeah but you cant get to New York can you"
"We could, it would take two days and a stop in Iceland"
"Oh rite, you wana know what his groundspeed is now 21"
"Sure"
"850, 875, 900, 925"
"We cant do that."
Fun of course interrupted by PWO and AAWO being killjoys "radio discipline Freddie blah blah blah"

A crab Freddie mate spun me a dit about a scrambling of the "Q" a few years back. VC10 going up the east coast like the clappers to refuel a couple of F3's. Never found out what the GS was, but apparently the mach meter was rumoured to be to the right of 0.90.

[ausdoc]

254 kts in a Mooney 201 Tennant Ck to Mt Isa is the best I've got.

[My names Turkish]

I almost broke the speed of sound in a cherokee (PA28) once!

Well not quite the speed of sound but 171kts is pretty fast for a warrior. We were ahead of a fairly serious storm coming out of New Orleans and had about a 50kt tail wind.

I have photographic evidence if you don't believe me, can't work out how to put it on the thread though

[Rattus]

Once got 390 kt out of a Diesel Astra on a single track road in Skye. GPS jamming trials do have their uses.:=

[lowflare]

Once I had ground speed-252kts...

ON A 3.5NM FINAL!!!

[18-Wheeler]

Prettt good, Lowflare!
I haven't managed that but I guess I've come close at times.
I also used to be able to turn base at about 250kts in the Metro 2 I used to fly on bank runs, not break any gear or flap speed limits and still slow down just fine to make the end of the runway.
A mate of mine used to drive a Westwind - It's a long story but he was clocked on radar on a straight-in approach into Cairns in Aus at 420kts GS at 7 miles.
He made the first taxyway!

[visibility3miles]

I was flying a Cessna 150 long ago, turning from base to final, when the tower asked me to "keep your speed up" as a Lear jet was number two in the pattern.

I refrained from saying "in your dreams" and pointed it down (it was a long runway, so I knew I wouldn't run out of room.) Fortunately, the Lear figured out that the max speed for a Cessna isn't much, and gave me time to land... :D

[witchdoctor]

Hey Turkish,

Got 186kts in a PA-28 over Arizona one winter according to the LORAN gs readout. Going the other way we only managed double figures though!:(

[My names Turkish]

Witchdoctor: whenever I chat to people in an FBO or flying school and they tell me they fly a PA28, I can always amaze with my story of 171kts. Its my only claim to fame and I want it back. Sad I know.

Therefore I must try and dismiss your claim unless you can prove to me that you did in fact go supersonic in the PA28. I have a photo what have you got?:D

[witchdoctor]

Memories.......aaah!

When I was a lad.......during the war.....etc, etc;)

[Jump Complete]

A couple of years ago flying a C152 up the east Florida coast to Jacksonville I was battling a headwind and glad I'd filled the tanks before take off.
A King air at FL090 above me asked for a GS read out.
"---- I show you at 120 kts.. but if it makes you feel any better I've got a cessna 150 below you showing 40kts!"

(Normal flight time was 90 mins. Took 185 mins. It wasn't a headwind, it was a cross wind, and it took almost as long to get back!)

[My names Turkish]

W.D: So no picture then? Guiness will never accept your claim to the world record without proof. So I win.

Somewhere someplace is the designer or test pilot of the PA28 laughing his ass off because he (probably) broke the two tonnne barrier....

[Whisky]

Hi again,

On request of many of you I have expanded the aircraft database on this site.
I've now included a database for Executive Jets, (smaller) turboprops (like King Air, Twin Otter etc) and even a database for light twins.

So from now on everybody flying some kind of twin can sent in their pictures.

Enjoy!!!
Whisky

p.s. Don't forget your camera on your next flight!

[ColdnFoggy]

430 kts INDICATED, upside down at night over the Barents Sea at 15000` The bird was a P-3.
Didn`t have the time to grab my camera as priorities where elsewhere
:eek:

[Tim Zukas]

I know 633 knots is unimpressive, except that it must have been the average from brake release to touchdown, or something like that:
http://www.fai.org/general_aviation/records/commercial.asp?group=3&city=perth

Does any non-Concorde city-to-city record beat that?

[G-SPOT is Back]

NW1

Why is you HSI aligned to true not Mag?

If its obvious please disregard and do me the very great honour of not making me look like a total ass in front of all other PPruners

Ta

[WOK]

Not so silly a question:

In common with other INS equipped a/c with electromechanical HSIs, the HSI is selectable to "Rad" or "INS" modes.

In "Rad" it works in the manner you are probably used to, and referenced to the appropriate compass. In "INS" mode it is referenced to True, the CDI is referenced to the desired track as required in the INS, and the beam-bar indicates linear deviation from track. (If you look you should also see a small "lin" flag on the HSI).

Very similar to the 747 and, I am sure, other types which first flew in the 70s.

[ftrplt]

F15E: M2.06, 792 CAS, 1192 G/S

F18: M1.67, 1024 G/S

[Whisky]

Hi all,

I've just finished redesigning the website and also changed the adress.
It can now be found at:

www.groundspeedrecords.com

Greetings,
Whisky

[autoflight]

minus 5 knots in a Winjeel over Point Cook 1963

[Ranger One]

How the frick did any Airbus manage a 734kts GS...???

<puts on flak jacket>

Or is it just that Airbus pilots carry cameras more often... Come on Boeing drivers!

R1, ducking