The Talon is an awesome airplane. It was affectionately called the “White Rocket”.
For a few years, it held the world time to climb to 50,000 feet record. It could climb at about 25,000 feet per minute!
It is still in use today, but with an upgraded avionics suite.
No autopilot. Yep, it was all hand flown. Typical cruise was Mach .9 (max speed of Mach 1.62). While we seldom flew faster than the speed of sound due to fuel burn at those speeds.
At cruise, even 1 degree of pitch change resulted in 900 feet per minute of climb or descent! Yep, very “hands on flying.”
It was a great training aircraft whether for aerobatics, trail (light weight combat maneuvers), formation flying – 2, 3, & 4 ship, instrument flying, navigation – both cross country and high speed low level.
