Thanks, CapnMac, glad you are aboard.
Bill, a funny one about the misread, but I'm sure it wasn't at the time. There were open houses at Beale and people got up close during those. There was a gravel pit right at the end of the runway where we bought specialized fill gravel for our well drilling and there was lots of good viewing from there. I did encounter U-2's when I was flying around there and that was always fun. Not very often would you see the SR-71's, mostly when they were doing touch and goes. Actually the most spectacular was one day some hot dog was doing touch and goes in a black T-38. He would bank so steep in his crosswind departure turn you could see his shoes.
Here's a couple of pictures from 1989 in my film camera days at Rancho Murita airport, where our company sponsored an airshow for a number of years. I have a better one of the SR-71 somewhere where it is streaming fuel off of its tail.
