Groom Lake flight test Feb 2011

reply to post by SplitInfinity


Hello everybody

This is my first post also. Have always been interested in Area 51 and look forward to reading the many post here on the forum. I recently read a rather large new book on Area 51 written by a women whos name I can't recall at the monent. Thought it was a great piece of work. Loaded with alot of information I never knew.

reply to post by Dayton

Hello Dayton and welcome. Area 51 was a Numerical Grid Survey where the Groom Lake Facility was built...specifically on the ancient dry lake bed and was found by Tony LeVier a pilot contracted by Kelly Johnson...the Head of Lochheeds...Skunk Works Aircraft Development Team...as a place where the development and testing of what would be called the U-2 Recon Aircraft.

Tony went off in a small plane and located the site and reported this to Johnson. The site being remote and a perfect natural runway was not only huge but away from prying eyes.

Interesting enough...when Tony LaVier...a few years back...asked to see the Groom Lake Facility...he was denied. He was a bit ticked off to say the least since now being elderly...he wished to get a tour of the base that he in fact found.

The Groom Lake Facility is home to the testing of all types of exotic USAF aircraft as well as actual Real Flight Time accessments of other counties aircraft such as the MiG-29 and others that the U.S. Military has either captured or purchased.

Plus there are some Very Secret programs going on there. Split Infinity

reply to post by Dayton


You need to watch out for Annie Jacob's Groom Lake book. Much of it is incorrect, and certainly the Nazi aspect is bunk.

I got a copy of the book "Boyd", which is about Nellis fighter pilot John Boyd. He talks about not wanting to be a test pilot because they spend a lot of time running through boring test sequences. So that might add some credence to this being a boring test flight.

What is missing is someone hanging out at Edwards and monitoring test flights out there. That is, we need a baseline measurement to understand what is normal, otherwise you can't judge what is unique. Quite likely you would hear similar comms at EDW.

If you want to hang out around Edwards and scan from a car with the least amount of "pain", there is a rest stop near Boron. Coordinates
35.00697 -117.71746

At least the trees there are taller than you. It has vending machines and bathrooms. Bring a book because the visuals aren't all that common that far out. I did catch the Boeing Dreamliner in flight out there doing orbits.

If you want to view from closer to the base, there are hills on the north side of the highway. You sort of stick out there like a wart on the hill. Nobody ever bothered me though.

You learn how effective of a solar heater a car can be just parked in the desert. You either use a lawn chair or run the engine and air-conditioner. As a compromise, you can put up the sun shield on the front window and look at the base from the side window if you don't want to run the engine and A/C for a few hours.

reply to post by boomer135

As far as the localizer and glideslope is concerned, I know for a fact that they had a VASI light system in the early 2000's but I'm not sure not what they could have. Maybe updated the glideslope to PAPI's but it wouldn't make much sense there because of the weather for one, and I would assume that most planes besides the Janet flights wouldn't need to fly the localizer and just do visuals all the time. Fighter pilots are cocky like that!

The Janet pilots have a bit different attitude than the fighter pilots. They use instrumentation maybe 30% of the time.

I think it would be nearly impossible to detect a VASI in operation from Tikaboo, given the orientation of the runways. In fact, I've never heard the localizer. I think if you were on a flight to Vegas going over route 95, you would hear it. Perhaps also on parts of Mt. Charleston.

Secret navigation instrumentation frequencies don't seem to get changed when published. So if someone had the frequency, it would have appeared on the internet by now. Note these airports can turn instrumentation on and off at will. Certainly that is the case with Base Camp.