PYD (pyramid navigation beacon) located

www.lazygranch.com...

Thanks to new high resolution imagery on Google Earth, the PYD navigation beacon has been located. It is believed that this is the "pyramid" fix heard on radio traffic from the Janets.

Star and flag.

Great work !!!

Hoping for more,
Lex

starred and flagged.


I am intrigued... I admit ignorance on the topic of the Pyramid Navigation beacon and it's purposes; as well as exactly what the JANETS are... BUT i want to know more...

I do see that its source it located at Nellis. I'm wondering if this is a homing beacon signal for all of our high altitude Top Secret planes, in case of lose of instrumentation... Or do you suspect a more nefarious purpose?

JANET is the name for the flights that travel to Area 51, carrying the workers to work every day. They fly 737-200s to Tonopah, Area 51, Plant 42, Las Vegas and other destinations.

[edit on 12/9/2007 by Zaphod58]

ohhhh...

thanks for the post... basically answered both of my questions with the JANETS answer...

Little bit of Wiki information on the JANET aircrafts:

/3x4phs

I am familiar with Area 51 and the Janet airplanes used, but what is the significance with these navigation beacons and Area 51?

Edited to fix url, doesn't seem to like URLs with ( or ) in them.

[edit on 9-12-2007 by HaTaX]


[edit on 9-12-2007 by HaTaX]

reply to post by HaTaX


Airports have various types of avionics that can be heard with a radio. Groom Lake is just another airport. OK, OK, it is a special airport, forgive me! ;-) However, it has the same stuff you find at other airports. NBD (non-directional beacon) is a really primitive navigation air. It transmits a tone (1020 or 400Hz) that is keyed to produce Morse code. The code identifies the navigation aid.

For painful detail, check out
www.lwca.org...

To get airnav's documentation on say MCY, go to
www.airnav.com...
and enter MCY

Incidentally, I don't recall the USAF owning MCY. It should be owned by the DOE. Yet another mystery to investigate.

The NDBs can be heard at great distances since the frequency they use is low. Technically in the LF band, a band beneath the AM broadcast band. Anyway, these beacons are easy to detect, but not all that easy to find from the ground if hidden behind mountains.

It's not too hard to catch the VHF beacons, which come from VORs. Groom Lake VOR is on 117.5, but to make things interesting, they ID it as MCY. However, everybody knows the LF MCY is at DRA, while the VHF MCY is at Groom Lake (TNX or TKM in the FAA logs, KXTA Homey on the maps).

There are two more signals to find. One is the localizer, and the other is the glide slope. The Groom Lake localizer is located at
N37.286368 W115.820293 . It is very directional and can't be heard from Tikaboo. There is generally a localizer pointing in each direction of the runway, but not in the case of Groom Lake. The Groom Lake VOR should be at
N37.242462 W115.792319 . The other navigation aid you can scan is the glide slope, which is UHF. That is even harder to find because it is both directional and points up in the air. These two might be detectable from Mount Charleston.

That's awesome, I think. Dude above me just blew my mind.
I still don't understand what the purpose of this exercise is?

reply to post by gariac


Great explanation, so I am guessing that the PYD beacon is somewhat of an enigma? It strikes me as odd that the Area 51 facility would use such a dated technology in any capacity really...

reply to post by HaTaX


Remember, Groom Lake recently has a 50th birthday. The NDBs on the range are old, but they were new once.

www.lazygranch.com...

This file was made from janet flights whose tracks I logged from flightaware.com, plus some hacking to get it into a format to display on google earth

I read this a bit but I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing here. My experience with communications stems from ham radio operations of which I have a license in. so far, this just looks like a basic low frequency antenna, and the star pattern is your basic ground plane to boost signal.

old tech in a way, but exceedingly reliable and simple. or is that the whole point. thanks for any info on this.

reply to post by CoffinFeeder


When I saw the photo, that was the first thing I thought of as well, was a basic ground plane antenna. Ham Radio Operator as well here. I suppose it would be effective, but could just as easily be somebodies toy.

reply to post by CoffinFeeder


Radials are needed for HF in the desert due to poor soil conductivity. Most NDBs don't look like these.

Here is a sat photo of one in Red Bluff,CA:
mapper.acme.com...

I got in the mood to log some beacons about two years ago, mostly to test out direction finding gear.

www.lazygranch.com...

MCY is on the page, though it sounds pretty poor from 300 miles away. Click on the waveform to hear the audio. Some have been cleaned up with DSP.