He's the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. Before Center could reply, I'm thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol' Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. 'I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.' Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Just moments after the Cessna's inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. Better to die than sound bad on the radios. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. I referred to it as the ' Houston Center voice.' I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. Center replied: 'November Charlie 175, I'm showing you at ninety knots on the ground.' We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him.

He understood that and allowed me that luxury. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn't match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status.

It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact.

Sr 71 cockpit