Blackbird Airpark

Here’s a fun opportunity: brave the winds and heat of the Antelope Valley to spend a few minutes at the Blackbird Airpark.

It only takes a few minutes because the museum is tiny – just four airplanes, a fire truck and a gift store.

Oh, but the airplanes there are so impressive.

You start with the U-2D, the 80-foot wingspan jet-powered glider built in 1959 but that served all the way out to 1980. This one has clearly done its time, and we were curious as to what shattered that starboard windscreen.

Looking at her, you can just picture her up there in the black, hovering on the very top of the atmosphere.

Right next door are these sinister-looking Blackbirds, an A-12 and an SR-71.

Like the U-2, these guys were assembled in the huge Building 42 – a place synonymous with top secret operations.

In fact, the A in A-12 here  doesn’t mean attack like it does for the A-6 or A-4. It stands for Archangel, the CIA codeword for the secret program for which she was developed.

The A-12 never flew a reconnaissance mission but performed as a test bed for the SR-71 program. This SR-71 in particular was pre-assembled in a secret hanger in Burbank and trucked up here at night for final assembly.

As we were looking at these astounding pieces of engineering, capable of traveling over 2,000 miles an hour at 80,000 feet, we were reminded that every inch of these incredible airframes was designed by guys with slide rules – calculators hadn’t even been invented yet.

Every square inch of the 101-foot-long fuselage has been sculpted to minimize friction and maximize lift.

The fourth airplane is a Lockheed D-21 drone. Built with little more than an SR-71 engine, these little guys zipped all the way up to 90,000 feet, where the sky is black, at 2200 miles per hour. They were built for reconnaissance, but the method of getting the film back proved to be just too difficult to manage.

The gift store has the usual tee shirts and memorabilia, but also features some really cool Blackbird-related technology, like the Goodyear tires made specifically for the Archangel program. The rubber’s mixed with powdered aluminum so they can handle the extreme heat environment of the SR-71.

The story of the Blackbird Airpark in intertwined with Edwards Flight-Test Museum. That museum is on the air force base, and only open during the week. But this Airpark is open Friday to Sunday, 11 to 4. The Flight Test Museum is seeking funding to build a new building that will someday include and protect these fine airplanes at the Airpark.

Until then, all you have to do to get here is take Exit 37, Rancho Vista Blvd, east from Highway 14.  You can’t miss it – the blackbirds are hiding just beyond the NASA 747.

Here’s the video we took during our tour: Blackbird Airpark.