I’m looking for good wheel well pics of the SR-71A. I have located some excellent shots of the gear, both main and front, and one good shot of the front gear bay. The rear bays have eluded me. Any help?
Thanks is advance!
I found this set of pics in the book Black Jets. I think the article originally came from the Wings of Fame series of magazines. I hope it helps. I think I have some other reference materials I’ll keep looking.
I remember the first time I found out that the tires on the SR-71 were actually silver from the aluminum added. That really amazed me.
These shots show the wheel wells of the SR-71 at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, AZ.
Front portion of nose gear well. Nose is out of frame at top. The circular receptacle at middle left is the air conditioning connection.
Rear portion of nose wheel well. The two stainless tanks are the liquid nitrogen dewars. The box at right between them contains the interphone connection and the ground power receptacle. The dark object at the very bottom of the frame is the top of the nose wheel strut
Rear of nose gear well and top of nose gear strut.
Nose gear strut, looking aft.
Left main landing gear strut, looking forward.
Left main gear, front 3/4 view viewed from fuselage.
Right main gear well, looking forward. The lighting fixture is part of the museum display and not original equipment. The inner landing gear door is shut. In normal operations, that door is open, exposing the red titanium tire shield (see dcaponeII’s post above).
Right main gear well, looking forward.
Right main gear well. Note the tire shield and the gear actuator piston.
Left main gear well, strut and actuator piston
Awesome help, guys. Thanks a bunch. Now where did I put those scratch building skills? Have to dig them up and dust them off!
Speaking of dust that plane looks like it just rolled in from a flight! They didn’t even wash it or anything. Nose wheel bay has a mix of clean and filthy going on. Weird. Even see dirty rain streaks in one of the shots. Just looks to cool. Just like they rolled it into the hanger and said “There ya go. Be carefull, those exhausts are still hot.”
Actually, Troy, that’s pretty much how it happened. We’ve got plenty of projects that need TLC, and this, thankfully, wasn’t one of them. I have no idea how to work with titanium alloys…It was outside for quite a while until the Spirit hangar was completed. Let me know if you need more shots of our bird.
Cheers,
Alex
The nose gear bay isn’t as dirty as the photo appearss. The brown areas are mostly insulation, rather than dirt.
The exterior paint finish isn’t as flat as it looks in most photos. It’s more of a satin or semi-gloss, even with the amount of weathering on this aircraft. When I get to this project, I plan to paint it gloss black lacquer, lightened slightly. After curing, I plan to rub it down with Tamiya polishing compound, thus getting rid of any surface texture on the paint. After decals are applied, I’ll spray a very light dull coat over it, just to knock off the highlights.
There are several different nose cones, which are mission dependent, so it’s not unusual for them to be a slightly different shade than the rest of the aircraft.
You work at Pima?! Wow… brain is working…
A co-worker of mine used to be friends with a fellow who was a retired airforce guy who worked on a few of the Blackbirds. His specialty was airframe I guess, because he did a lot of sheet metal work. My friend called him the best sheet metal guy he’s ever known to date. Said he worked magic on the belly of an A-26 civie bird that had the nose gear collapse on landing. Anyway, the guy used to tell stories of how when he went home in the evenings after working on the 71’s his arms and shoulders would ache without mercy from running the drill on that Ti skin. Hard stuff.