From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #637 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 20 March 1996 Volume 05 : Number 637 In this issue: Re: Mary, You are amazing. Re: Mary, You are amazing. Re: Skyquakes Re: Biological Analogies Aurora by any other name would smell as sweet... Enough fighting!! Tailless versus tailless Re: Biological Analogies Re: Tailless versus tailless Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #636 RE: Mary Shafer: Re: Looking for Information on Long Range Missile Kills RE: Tailless Tall Tales Re: Biological Analogies RE: Trip report copy for you (fwd) See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: fmarkus@pipeline.com (Frank Markus) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 05:36:30 -0500 Subject: Re: Mary, You are amazing. On Mar 19, 1996 03:40:36, 'Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com' wrote: [substance of message omitted] >PS Rays and skates, while not benthic, are bottom living >creatures. > >Chuck > We are getting off topic but... The big rays, i.e, spotted eagle rays and mantas, are pelagic. They are superb swimmers and are the highlight of any dive in which they are observed. I am not certain to what extent their flight is analogous to aircraft as their wings do not appear to be used for lift as much as they are used for propulsion. But we are getting far off topic. Speaking of which, I just want to say how distasteful I found a message with the subject of "Taiwan Postal" from someone who identified himself as "aka RESIDENT, POSTAL" . It was off-topic, unfunny, racist and childishly obscene. I have a thick skin so my main complaint is that it was unfunny. Oh well. ------------------------------ From: fmarkus@pipeline.com (Frank Markus) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 05:36:30 -0500 Subject: Re: Mary, You are amazing. On Mar 19, 1996 03:40:36, 'Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com' wrote: [substance of message omitted] >PS Rays and skates, while not benthic, are bottom living >creatures. > >Chuck > We are getting off topic but... The big rays, i.e, spotted eagle rays and mantas, are pelagic. They are superb swimmers and are the highlight of any dive in which they are observed. I am not certain to what extent their flight is analogous to aircraft as their wings do not appear to be used for lift as much as they are used for propulsion. But we are getting far off topic. Speaking of which, I just want to say how distasteful I found a message with the subject of "Taiwan Postal" from someone who identified himself as "aka RESIDENT, POSTAL" . It was off-topic, unfunny, racist and childishly obscene. I have a thick skin so my main complaint is that it was unfunny. Oh well. ------------------------------ From: "J. Pharabod" Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 14:29:09 MET Subject: Re: Skyquakes On March 5 I asked the following question about the 1992 skyquaques in Southern California: >What is the status of these "skyquakes" ? Are they still heard / felt ? >What is the present explanation (if there is one) ? and received no answer, except from Paul Keller after asking once more. On March 15 I posted the same question to the SKEPTIC discussion group and received 4 relevant answers. Summarizing: Answer 1: "were just ordinary sonic booms" (kind of urban legend) Answers 2 and 3: "did happen, were not ordinary" Answer 4: not about the quakes themselves, but about Aurora... Below are these answers (I masked name and address in the first one since it was private). According to answer 3, these quakes were no longer heard/felt after (spring?) 1993. J. Pharabod ._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._. Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:54:00 -0800 (PST) From: xx yyyy Subject: Re: Skyquakes To: "J. Pharabod" In-Reply-To: <960315.144520.MET.PHARABOD@FRCPN11.IN2P3.FR> [...] I've lived in LA all my life. The only thing I ever heard about these "quakes" was the LA Times article you mention above. They certainly haven't been widely felt, and I don't think there's been much, if any, mention of these since. I'd guess somebody got a little too upset over a couple of sonic booms or something. Xxxx - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 10:56:00 -0500 From: "TICE, MICHAEL" To: "skeptic" Subject: RE: Skyquakes Message-ID: <96Mar15.121550edt.6500-1@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu> I have heard some in the past, but the only reason I recognized it as a "skyquake" is the reportage on the news. The local news name for the occurences was "mystery jolt". I haven't seen any reports of them in quite a while, but that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't occuring. THe sound is a loud boom that I usually took to be the slamming of a metal trash dumpster from a nearby apartment. Then when I saw the news, I would correctly (?) attribute the sound to the 'mystery jolt'. Not the best scientific method, I admit. It's very different from the booms created by the Space Shuttle when it lands at Edwards. They're sharp window-rattling booms. The jolts are a more diffuse thundery sound. --Mike - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 16:19:54 -0500 From: "Shela M. Kosmoski" To: skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu Subject: Re: Skyquakes Message-ID: <199603152119.NAA08067@cheetah.it.wsu.edu> [...] I lived in Southern California for the past 22 years in Orange County which is the next county over (2 hour drive from LA) in Newport Beach. Several times we could here "sonic booms" over the ocean. It was very strange and people just acted like it was a normal thing. Newport Beach is not far from the Airforce base so there was always alot of air trafic. The last time I heard booms like that was about 3 year ago. Shela - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 22:51:51 -0500 From: wdl@netcom.com (Wm.D.Loughman) To: skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu Subject: Re: Skyquakes Message-ID: <199603160351.TAA06988@netcom19.netcom.com> [...] Can't speak to the specific question. But, sometime in September(?) of 1995 I posted to this list a query regarding one Roy(?) Carpenter, an elderly man I met while vacationing (look it up). He claimed to have been an SR-71 pilot, and was _very_ talkative. At several points in our conversations, he suggested to me that - if I thought the 'Blackbird' was nifty - there was something even better. He called it the "Aurora", and wouldn't talk about it. That post to this (Skeptic) list was reposted to the "skunk-works" list (not by me), and I got a number of unbidden responses. This Roy/Ray Carpenter was real. _Apparently_ I was talking to the genuine article. ... For what it's worth. :-) b-) ;-) :-) - - Bill (wdl@netcom.com) ------------------------------ From: Tim Ottinger Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 8:48:32 CST Subject: Re: Biological Analogies : :Assertion: There are no flying wing birds. :Conclusion: A flying wing is apparently not a good design for an ornithopter. I would think generally that the "bird thing" is because God (amend to "nature" or "evolution" to your liking) liked keeping all of the soft vitals inside a bone cage, and liked keeping the wings pliable. I'm not sure that this isn't applicable to aircraft design, but neither am I sure that it is. They say that the idea for flying wings is based on a natural occurance: some kind of seed. The seed has more lift than it needs, and little directional stability. I saw the film of it "falling", and it yaws rather a lot and stalls out every few inches. Not exactly the best design for a bomber. Still, whether it's aerodynamic or not, it sure is cool to watch a big bird like that bank. - -- Tim +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tim Ottinger tottinge@csci.csc.com (217)351-8508x2420 | | CSC CIS Champaign, IL - The Silicon Prairie " -7420(fax) | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | If you think that any programming language will solve all your | | problems right out of the box, you must not have any interesting | | problems. -- A. Koenig | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ From: adrian mann Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 17:35:35 +0000 Subject: Aurora by any other name would smell as sweet... Just had a interesting message from a guy in London, who refers to Aurora as "The Silent Vulcan" - has anyone heard of this before? - I never have. Any other names for this mythical beast out there? The other one I've heard is Excalibur, but can't remember where... Also claims to have a video clip (apparently of "Aurora") from about 6 years ago. I'm pursuing this and hope to get back on this later. Has anyone heard of the existence of this either? =DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF= =DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF= =DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF=DF= =DF=DF=DF=DF=DF Adrian Mann, Birmingham, England Get Netscape 2.01 NOW! Its a way of life... ------------------------------ From: David Lednicer Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 09:09:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: Enough fighting!! OK, lets get to the bottom of the controversy surrounding the B-2 and other flying wings. The story is this: Bill Sears and Irv Ashkenas published a report in 1945 covering flying wings. In the report, they messed around with the Breguet Range Equation, so that it included the aircraft's volume and wing to tail area ratio. Then they took the derivative of range with respect to this ratio. To find the min/max, they set this derivative equal to zero and found that the flying wing (where the ratio of wing area to tail area is a max) was the best solution. BUT, they made a common mistake of undergraduate students of calculus - they forgot to check if this was a max or a min. Joe Foa, then at the Cornell Aero Labs (1947), detected this error and has been waving it like a flag ever since. As Bill Sears had just left Northrop to become chair of the aero department at Cornell, I detect a little acedemic infighting going on here. For those interested in further reading, you might want to find the following references (I only have the last three): Ashkenas, I.I., "Range Performance of Turbojet Airplanes", Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, Vol. 15, February 1948, pp.97-101. Foa, J.V., "Suitability of Flying Wings as Jet Airplanes", Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, April 1949, pp.253-254. Foa, J.V., "The Flying Wing Reconsidered", Canadian Aeronautics and Space Journal, Vol. 30, March 1984, pp.62-65. Anon., "Skeleton Alleged in the Stealth Bomber's Closet", Science, Vol. 244, pp.650-651. Torenbeek, E., "Aerodynamic Performance of Wing-Body Configurations and the Flying Wing", SAE paper 911019, April 1991. I should mention that the paper by Tornbeek (a highly esteemed Professor at Delft University) is an excellent reassesment of this topic, and he tends to agree with Foa (and Chuck) that the flying wing is inferior to an optimum wing-body comfiguration, for the same enclosed volume. - ------------------------------------------------------------------- David Lednicer | "Applied Computational Fluid Dynamics" Analytical Methods, Inc. | email: dave@amiwest.com 2133 152nd Ave NE | tel: (206) 643-9090 Redmond, WA 98052 USA | fax: (206) 746-1299 ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 15:42:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: Tailless versus tailless It has suddenly become obviously to me that we're arguing at cross purposes. When I say "tailless" I mean without a vertical tail or rudder. When Charles Smith says "tailless", he means at least without a horizontal stabilizer or elevator or elevon. I'm not sure whether the verticals are included. I've never seen any bird that wasn't tailless, based on my definition, for example They just don't have big sticky-uppy vertical surfaces. These don't fit the other definition, of course, because they have rolling tails, horizontal control surfaces. Any time you read my postings talking about tailless aircraft, birds, fish, etc, remember that I mean no vertical fin or control surfaces. Every time you read Charles' postings, remember that he means no horizontal fins or control surfaces. To me, porpoises and whales are tailless and tuna aren't, to Charles these are exactly reversed. As you can guess, we're talking at cross purposes and each thing that we've said needs to be viewed in light of the differing uses of the term. I'm right, so far as I know, about taking off the vertical and I assume he's right about taking off the horizontal. Although the F-16XL had no horizontal tail but did have a vertical one, it had a lot less drag and better performance. However, to make this more complicated, it also had a different wing. I'm sorry about the confusion. One of us should have asked the other, I guess. We should have realized that we both couldn't be so wrong. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... ------------------------------ From: Brett Davidson Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 10:40:50 +1200 (NZST) Subject: Re: Biological Analogies On Wed, 20 Mar 1996, Tim Ottinger wrote: > : > :Assertion: There are no flying wing birds. > :Conclusion: A flying wing is apparently not a good design for an ornithopter. > > I would think generally that the "bird thing" is because God (amend to "nature" > or "evolution" to your liking) liked keeping all of the soft vitals inside > a bone cage, and liked keeping the wings pliable. Actually, I was just trying to make the point that direct one-to-one correspondences between nature's "designs" with the resources it has, and human industrial design, with the resources it has are not as valid as they might appear. - --Brett ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 17:59:28 -0800 Subject: Re: Tailless versus tailless David Lednicer writes: > OK, lets get to the bottom of the controversy surrounding the B-2 >and other flying wings. The story is this: Thanks David, that was very helpful to those of us who haven't read the papers. This brings up an observation I'd like to make, even though I'm not currently versed in the technical aspects of all this. It seems like a fuselage is an important aspect to all of this too. Why? The B-2 really could be classed as a wing body design perhaps? It has a very pronounced hump which could be taken for a blended fuselage. I might add that the most recent stealthy design that we've seen, namely the Lockheed-Martin Darkstar UAV, could be described the same way? Larry ------------------------------ From: dsm@iti-oh.com (dsm@iti-oh.com) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 21:34:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Skunk Works Digest V5 #636 According to skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu: >> From: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com >> Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 09:44:48 PST >> Subject: Re: Tailless Tall Tales >> >> Mary, >> I`m VERY surprised at your reply!!!!!!!! >> >> Per the work of Ashkenas et. al. of Northrop, and the >> work by Cornell Aero labs (now Calspan) a pure flying >> wing is the ABSOLUTE WORST possible planform >> for a turbojet or turbofan aircraft- period. >> >> Visit my home page for some history here >> http://www.vivanet.com/"csmith9/index.html >> >> I have been for the past 10 months spending some >> spare time trying to get a tailless sailplane design that >> will give "adequate (say 30 to 1) performance >> with great difficulty. >> I'd be careful fooling with mother nature. >> .It all comes down to the volume you need to enclose. >> A fuselage works better. No surprise, really, since >> Mother Nature figured it out millions of years ago. >> How many flying wing birds are there? I haven't seen many Condors, Hawks or Eagles with pectoral fins. >> Notice that a tuna or shark has small wings and a big >> fuse. I would argue that Sharks, like biplanes are primitives in their families of evoluations. >> The "flying wing" fishes live on the bottom. Not a Manta Ray.... Cheers, Dan ------------------------------ From: "Mark E. Schmidt" Date: Thu, 21 Mar 96 03:05:49 UT Subject: RE: Mary Shafer: Re: Looking for Information on Long Range Missile Kills - ---------- From: owner-skunk-works@mail.orst.edu on behalf of Michael Chui Sent: Monday, March 18, 1996 7:58 PM To: skunk-works@mail.orst.edu Subject: Mary Shafer: Re: Looking for Information on Long Range Missile Kills Mary granted me permission to repost her response to the list. Michael - ------- Forwarded Message Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 11:16:44 -0500 (EST) From: Mary Shafer Subject: Re: Looking for Information on Long Range Missile Kills To: Michael Chui Cc: Mary Shafer In-Reply-To: <199603180438.XAA04306@moose.cs.indiana.edu> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, the term my friend used was "launched itself". He never touched the trigger. He was just flying as no. 4 in a combat spread doing either cap or barcap, with Master Arm on. His radar had shown a two-man flying toward them and he'd just made visual id on the two A-10s that were flying on essentially a reverse heading about 10K ft below the 18s. All at once he felt a thump on his airplane and he came back inside and focussed on the engine instruments, which were all just fine. Just as he looked up at his stores page and noticed that he was missing a Sparrow, his lead called "who launched that missile?" and he shut down the radar, denying the Sparrow guidance onto the A-10s. Great sequence of events, and appropriate response - I'd fly w/ this person anytime. When they returned to the boat, they did a computer download and it proved conclusively that he hadn't launched it. He told me that he'd heard that there were at least four such incidents, including his. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... On Sun, 17 Mar 1996, Michael Chui wrote: > Mary: > > >I'm told by a very reliable source (one of the four pilots) that four > >Sparrows were launched by F-18s without any pilot input during the Gulf > >War and immediately after. > > I'm a little confused here. (Well, ok, it's not really that > unusual a condition for me. :-) Are you saying that four Sparrows > left the rails without the pilots firing them? Some kind of "accidental > discharge" in the sky? > > Michael Chui > mchui@cs.indiana.edu - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------ From: "Mark E. Schmidt" Date: Thu, 21 Mar 96 03:03:37 UT Subject: RE: Tailless Tall Tales WOW, put the gloves on first, eh? Seriously, Mary, thanks for the guts, considering your position, to mention the politics surrounding the flying wing projects in their earlier days. As to the references to nature, all the birds I've seen have a tail as regards the pitch axis, but I've never seen a bird w/ a rudder, hmmmmmm . .. . Given the roll axis modulation I've seen these wild critters exhibit on their tail feathers, who needs a rudder? - nature's ruddervator, i.e. V-Tailed doctor-killer (Bonanza). - ---------- From: owner-skunk-works@mail.orst.edu on behalf of Mary Shafer Sent: Monday, March 18, 1996 7:35 PM To: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com Cc: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com; skunk-works@mail.orst.edu Subject: Re: Tailless Tall Tales Want to tell all this to the folks proposing the tailless X-31? Or explain to rays and skates that they can't swim? They're pelagic fish, not bottom dwellers. Irv Ashkenas doesn't work for Northrop, he works for STI (only part time now, he's pretty much retired). If he did work for Northrop, it was more than 30 years ago, because he was a founder of STI. Anything that came out of Cornell Aero Labs is sufficiently out of date that I wouldn't put a lot of stock in it. Considering the techniques used for generating math models back then, it's highly likely that their original model was so bad that no conclusions are meaningful. One bad assumption and the results are useless. What has Calspan had to say in the last few years? Also remember that there was a real conspiracy by the Air Force in the 1950s to prove that flying wings were terrible, following their inability to bully Jack Northrop into teaming with a Texas company that was in the district of a Congressman from Texas on the Armed Forces Subcommittee. Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... On Mon, 18 Mar 1996 Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com wrote: > Mary, > I`m VERY surprised at your reply!!!!!!!! > > Per the work of Ashkenas et. al. of Northrop, and the > work by Cornell Aero labs (now Calspan) a pure flying > wing is the ABSOLUTE WORST possible planform > for a turbojet or turbofan aircraft- period. > > Visit my home page for some history here > http://www.vivanet.com/"csmith9/index.html > > I have been for the past 10 months spending some > spare time trying to get a tailless sailplane design that > will give "adequate (say 30 to 1) performance > with great difficulty. > > .It all comes down to the volume you need to enclose. > A fuselage works better. No surprise, really, since > Mother Nature figured it out millions of years ago. > How many flying wing birds are there? > Notice that a tuna or shark has small wings and a big > fuse. > The "flying wing" fishes live on the bottom. > > Now, as some of you are aware, I do beleive that > with a closed-loop RSS system with symetrical > sections a large, lightly loaded, a spanloader of > moderate sweep would become practical, but only > if the bypass ratio on the engines exceeds 75%. > Not exactly a stealthy planform! Would be a good > high endurance design,-maybe- if the Mach number > never gets over 0.3. > > Remember that without a vertical fin the yaw > stability requires a fairly good 1/4C sweep. > > Stability and control for tailless aircraft is well understood, > and actually quite a bit simpler than for a conventional > aircraft. All you need for pitch is positive static margin > and a POSITIVE moment coefficient. > And therein lies the problem. To get the proper > moment you give up section efficiency - > but you already knew that. > > No need to wory about downwash effects > from the wing! > > > In closing, the B2 is a useless dinosaur that has the > range of a C150. It was a known failed concept > when it was started. Several prominent people > have been quite opposed to the program as > based on poor mathmatics from the very beginning. > It suffers the very same problems that killed off > its forefathers, the, YB49, and the YRB 49. > > General Hap Arnold knew the problems with spanloaders, > and all of his successors have. > Remember also that the day after the YB49 set a speed record > from Ca. to DC, the Boeing company utterly destroyed the > record with a conventional planformed aircraft. > > Still, my picture of the "YB" over the Capitol made the > whole exercise worthwhile! > I love spanloaders, but I am realistic. > Chuck > ------------------------------ From: chosa@chosa.win.net (Byron Weber) Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 19:55:12 Subject: Re: Biological Analogies >Assertion: There are no flying wing birds. >Conclusion: A flying wing is apparently not a good design for an ornithopter. > Whether or not the flying wind is efficient is another issue. If planes flapped their wings, well, then one might consider biological analogies. Or, if birds had props or wing buried Williams Internat'l turbofan engines, maybe. Not a bad idea though, come to think of it. Now, that would be stealthy. ------------------------------ From: "Mark E. Schmidt" Date: Thu, 21 Mar 96 03:35:23 UT Subject: RE: Trip report copy for you (fwd) All too often I've run into over-zealous, undertrained ATC folk, both civilian and military, and y'all were right in handling the *situations* w/ kid gloves. When you know for sure you're right, pursue w/ diplomacy, and have all *heated* discussions privately via land-line. Good work, and great narative, thanks. - ---------- From: owner-skunk-works@mail.orst.edu on behalf of William Seiber Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 1996 1:00 AM To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Trip report copy for you (fwd) Forwarded message: From tmahood@netcom.com Mon Mar 11 20:05:14 1996 From: tmahood@netcom.com (Tom Mahood) Message-Id: <199603120114.RAA00370@netcom11.netcom.com> Subject: Trip report copy for you To: will@escape.com Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 17:14:26 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 11144 Trip Report by Tom Mahood The Grand Circumnavigation of Area 51 On March 10, 1996, Glenn Campbell and I met Will Seiber at the North Las Vegas airport for a aerial circumnavigation of the Test Site and Nellis Range, including of course, Area 51. Will, who with some friends was on spring break from the University of Oklahoma, was to be the pilot. Normal college students go to Florida, Palm Springs or Mexico for spring break, and some go to Area 51. Will arranged the rental of a Cessna 182 for the adventure. We departed the airport about 7:00 am and started to climb, following Highway 95 to the northwest. The air was smooth and quite clear, with visibility in the 80-100 mile range. Just a perfect day for what we had planned. Exactly what we had planned was a traverse of R-4807A, flying between the Tonopah Test Range and the NTS/Groom airspace. This was the airspace that opened up in July of 1995, allowing civilian air traffic on Sundays when the military had no Red Flag exercises planned. Will had taken the precaution of checking with the local Flight Service Station before we left, to ensure there wouldn't be any surprises. Hah! Shortly after we passed Indian Springs at 8500', we got a nice look at Groom Lake from the south, and an even better view of Papoose Lake. Due to the vibration of the aircraft, the viewing was no better than the further distant Mt. Stirling location. Still, it was a pretty sight. Passing Mercury, we had a good look into the Test Site, with Frenchman Flat and Yucca Flat spread out very fine, with CP-1 perched on its ridge between. Continuing northwest along Highway 95, we had a good peep at Area 27, which used to be the assembly area for the various devices detonated at the NTS. There were a number of smaller buildings there, but were a bit distant to see any details. Next, we came abeam of the Jackass Flats area. The BREN Tower and all the old NERVA facilities and MX missile deployment areas were easily seen, as well as the portal area of the Yucca Mountain project. As we reached the area between Yucca Mountain and Beatty, it was time to head due north into the formerly completely restricted R-4807A airspace. We came to the conclusion that it would probably be a good idea to be in touch with Nellis Control for any warnings of nearby aircraft, so Will gave them a call on the radio. Nellis came back right away and told us we were in restricted airspace and to immediately turn to a heading of 270 degrees (i.e., west) and exit the airspace. Get the hell outta Dodge! Well, THAT was certainly interesting, not to mention unexpected! After turning to the west, we looked at each other, then looked at the map then asked Nellis if they were sure about that? Nellis responded with a terse "yes!" Then, Will read to the controller that part of the aircraft sectional chart where the new restrictions for the area were listed. It didn't seem to impress the controller in the least. Nellis said the area was ALWAYS restricted! We quickly tried to decide what to due next. Even if this guy had his head up his ass, we weren't about to violate instructions and proceed through a restricted area. Not healthy, these guys have planes with guns. Will thought it best to land at Beatty and make a phone call or two (all of us completely forgetting the presence of Glenn's beloved cellular phone in the back seat). As we turned toward Beatty, Will got back on the radio and asked for Nellis' phone number so that we might give them a call from the ground, which he gruffly provided. This must have hit a nerve, because just a few minutes later Nellis came back and informed us that we were cleared to enter R-4807A. Musta been a new guy who finally checked with his boss! With that weirdness out of the way, we headed back north toward the twin radomes on Black Mountain. As we approached it, the Tolicha Peak Electronic Combat Range (TPECR) came into view just to the west, so we detoured over to have a look at that. I had previously seen the facility from Stonewall Peak, but from a direct overhead viewpoint it looked much less substantial. No airstrip, but a lot of expected radar and other electronic emplacements. At the main facility area there were several aluminum warehouse type buildings with large rollup doors. Access was via a paved road from Highway 95, which continued on to the radar facilities atop Black Mountain. All in all, not extremely impressive and certainly not a secret saucer base! However, just a bit further north from the TPECR was what looked like a large desert airstrip with a number of aircraft on it. Now that was worth a look, so we proceeded over to it and circled. It turned out it was some sort of target area made up to look like an airstrip, with a collection of junked planes. Some of the aircraft had their wings detached from the fuselages and placed next to them on the ground. None of us could quite figure out just what kind of planes they were, although there appeared to be an assortment. About this time, we must have been really annoying Nellis, because the radio crackled back into life and Nellis wanted to know "What your intentions were?" Will replied that we would be heading east toward Rachel. Nellis came back and instructed us to proceed toward Rachel without delay. We got the impression that civilian planes don't do this too often and they weren't going to relax until we were out of there. So we started east, marveling at all the weird targets, bomb craters and various pieces of junk out there. Of course we were also keeping our eyes open for secret saucer bases, but this being Sunday, they were apparently closed. We checked out the Gold Flat area, a potential location for the Cheshire Airstrip (but that's another story), and saw nothing. Just desert and bombed areas. We were cruising at about 9,500', so we had a look into the Tonopah Test Range to the north. It's boundaries were fairly apparent due to the perimeter road used to access the cinetheodolites. The main base area of TTR was too far north to make out many details. Unfortunately we didn't get too good a look into Area 19 of the NTS, as our route was a bit north of it and we picked up a bit of sun glare looking south. While we could have turned south and followed the border more closely, we were a bit nervous already at being where we were. Nellis had come back on the radio several times to warn us we were approaching the southerly boundary of TTR, so they might have freaked had we turned directly toward the NTS. But while we might have been nervous, the Nellis boys seemed even more so. At one point they asked what our final destination was going to be (Are they going to be meeting us, we wondered??) and Will described out route back to Las Vegas. Nellis replied "Sightseeing, huh?", to which we could only agree. I noted, with more than passing interest, the antics of our plane's transponder. The transponder flashes a light on the instrument panel whenever it's interrogated by a ground based radar. Normally, it flashes briefly every few seconds or so. In this area it was illuminated almost constantly! We were certainly being scanned a lot and I wondered if the light would burn out. After passing just north of the appropriately named "Saucer Mesa" (strictly due to its shape!!) we crossed over the Kawich Valley just north of Kawich Lake. The lake had what appeared to be a giant bullseye in it, with a pole at its center. Don't know what it was. Slowly, we could see Rachel and the normal world approaching off in the distance. But better than that was a choice view of Groom Lake looking right down the two runways to the south. The west runway still looked to be definitely the longer of the two. We were far enough from the main base so that we really couldn't pick up details, but we observed that the dirt road accessing Groom from the north (Rachel) is paved after it passes through the guard gate. So much for the idea that all really fine secret bases must be at the end of a dirt road. After passing out of the restricted airspace, we collectively breathed a sigh of relief and headed for Rachel. We made a few low passes over Rachel to check things out. It looks about as forlorn from the air as from the ground. Getting bored with that, we turned south, flying over the Tikaboo Valley. We had hoped to get a good view of Bald Mountain and the facility atop it, but after cheating death by crossing the restricted area, we decided to keep our distance and never got a really good view due to aircraft vibration. On the other hand, the view of Groom from high above Tikaboo Valley was nothing short of spectacular. From our vantage point there were no foothills to block the view, so the whole facility sprawled before us. From our height, even Papoose Lake was visible to the south. That view was worth the trip alone, and we weren't even in restricted airspace anymore. Turning a bit to the east to skirt the remaining restricted areas put us right over Tikaboo Peak. It certainly looks flatter from the air. Don't understand why the hike is so hard. There was minor snow and looked to be hikable as of now. The rest of the trip was almost noneventful. I say almost because as we continued south over Highway 93, we needed to contact Las Vegas approach prior to entering the controlled airspace which surrounds the Las Vegas area. After several minutes of wondering why they weren't responding to our radio queries, we realized that the transmitter in our aircraft wasn't working! That was just swell. Will wisely brought along a hand held aircraft radio as a backup, but it appeared we were too far out to make contact with the lower powered handheld radio. Will decided the best way at this point was to drop below the lower ceiling of the controlled airspace and slither our way back to the North Las Vegas airport. Perfectly legal, but we were unable to be anymore than 2,000' or so above the ground. It's situations like this where the engine usually starts to make funny noises, but this time it behaved itself. Finally, with the airport in sight, Will was able to raise them on the handheld and we plopped back down with an exquisitely smooth landing, just after 10:00 am, three hours after we left. The folks at the rental agency seemed to think the problem was simply that the microphone plug was pulled out slightly, but Will had checked that possibility several times in the air. Personally, I think it was all those electronic countermeasures we flew over. Anyway, disaster averted. All in all, an outstanding adventure. I'd highly recommend it for any aircraft buffs or anyone with interest in the NTS/Nellis area. I don't know that I'd do it again, as there just wasn't a whole lot to see, other that what we did see. It was certainly an itch I wanted to scratch. Thanks to Will for his fine pilotage skills, and avoiding the various missiles fired at us.... ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #637 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". 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