posted on Aug, 7 2014 @ 11:19 PM
a reply to:
boomer135
Nevada is currently in monsoon season with a dash of lightning storms, so negatory to being on top of Tikaboo lately. I was just out there for the Red
Flag and didn't climb more than 200ft AGL. I was going to shoot the TTR, but the conditions were a combination of lighting and virga.
That article has so little actual new information in it. It is like the guy got paid by the word and thus wrote about every rumored black project a
Google search would dredge up.
And for being an expert, well it is Edwards "south base", not "east base." I mean, when they take you there, that is what they call it, usually in
a sentence like "No photography of south base!" [Not "the south base", but just "south base", FWIW.) That is really annoying since they have
all those old aircraft back there waiting for restoration, and those aircraft are not secret.
Regarding the location of the new Groom hangar being handy for a quick takeoff, well I just don't know about that. The rule is when landing or taking
off, you do so into the wind to get the lift. But I don't know how necessary that really is. You hear a lot of 32 landings then followed by a 14
takeoff. I think in general aircraft don't like making the arc that is required in a 14 landing and 32 takeoff. In fact, for ILS, there is only
instrumentation for a 32 landing. If a plane wants to ILS a 14 landing, they ILS to the north as if doing a 32 landing, then make an arc and VFR for
the 14 landing. Perhaps a pilot could shed more light on this.
I don't even think the fact the hangars have two doors is all that big of a deal. I've seen such hangars for non-black projects.
I think I mentioned the story that when I had a media pass for one of the EDW open houses, not only were the instructions not to photograph south
base, but specifically not to photograph the large tank (as in vacuum, not the kind the army uses). Of course that lead everyone to research the use
of the tank, which the consensus was it was used to create the conditions similar to what the ABL would be operating in.