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Groom Lake October 2013

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posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 02:05 AM
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This first panoramic image is just a quick and dirty series of shots I did while the sun was just high enough to illuminate the base. I will upload another series later.

I will present links for small, medium and large images, but at the time I am entering this post, only the small image has finished uploading. So if a link 404s, try again later.

The new hush house is visible. Find the water tower, then looks in front of the building that is in front of the water tower, then looking in front of that building. Oh yeah, there is only one water tower now. I thought they added a second tower for more capacity, but maybe the old tower was not structurally sound, or maybe the location was a problem.

Groom Lake #1 small

Groom Lake #1 medium

Groom Lake #1 large

Don't forget to do a "save link as". The medium and large images will crash the browser. I don't have an issue with people saving images for their personal use. Uploading my stuff to the other websites will get you bad karma, not to mention the malocchio.

edit on 18-10-2013 by gariac because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 02:37 AM
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Nice photos. Would love to see what's in those hangars and what's underground.



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 02:58 AM
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Great photos.

Some friends and I traveled out there in August. We planned to hike to the top of Tikaboo Peak in the morning, but we realized our vehicle wasn't going to be able to even make it to the point where most people stop and hike the rest of the way due to the road becoming extremely rugged at the spot I point out below.




edit on 18-10-2013 by SeriousIndividual because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 02:39 PM
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Are you the guys I left water and power bars at the staging area? We met two guys on the way down from the peak that said their car got stuck in the sand and had hiked 11 miles at the point where we met them. They were short of water, hence the supplies I left.

Waypoints would be much clearer than those images. BTW, here is the KMZ for the ride:
Tikoboo KMZ

You can do the drive to Tikaboo in a car, though I don't suggest it. The big problem with the so called "Vegas SUV", AKA passenger car rental that is driven off road, is the lack of off road tires. Four wheel drive and low range is nice, but most of the road you travel around the range just need two wheel drive with some clearance. But the stones will get your tires eventually, even if you have off road tires. I have had my share of flats, though one was with passenger tires. You really need BFGs or Geolanders. BFGs are probably the best off road, but kind of annoying to use year round.

Most if not all rental cars will just have a donut spare.



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 03:47 PM
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Here is a photo just prior to the hush house being built. At the right of the photo, you can see curved structures that are to be used in building the hush house. This photo is from uly 2010 imagery.
No hush house

In this photo, you can see the old and new tower. Also, it turns out the hush house was completed, but nobody noticed this. The photo is from October 2011.
old and new tower present
If you go to the new pano, you will see the red and white tower is gone.

I spotted two areas with new construction. This area has been grubbed and you can see there is some equipment being staged there. It wouldn't surprise me if a new hangar shows up here eventually.
construction in progress

In the next photograph, the light colored structures at the left are new. Hard to tell what is going on there, but the buildings are not very large.
new buildings

Incidentally, this PNG files are going to be replaced by JPGs when I get around to it. PNG are uncompressed, but the image quality doesn't warrant loss less compression. The only reason I uploaded PNGs is the experimental version of the GIMP was crashing during JPG conversion.



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 05:38 PM
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reply to post by gariac
 


No, couldn't have been us as we didn't see anyone out there. Your route is exactly what we took except near the five mile mark, just below "tikgate" on the KMZ, the road forks and we took the right side instead of going left like you did. About 1.25 miles after the fork we came to the point where we knew we couldn't go any further due to the ruggedness. The reason we were out there was because we were on a cross country trip going from Ohio to California and our only option was a 2012 Ford Focus.....not ideal for offroading.

I was driving and when I saw the conditions of that dirt road I let my friends know we probably should forget about it, but they weren't going to have that and I knew if I refused to drive one of them was just going to take the wheel and attempt it anyway. I'm the better driver out of the three of us, they have stated this themselves, so I thought "Well, what the hell, this vehicle is going to attempt this drive with or without me at the wheel so we might as well have the better driver at the wheel." It was the most nerve wracking 12 miles of road I've had the opportunity to drive on thus far, but luckily we had no trouble aside from the many moments where I thought we were about to get stuck or experience a flat. I couldn't have been happier to see the extreme ruggedness at 6.25 miles because everyone came to the consensus we needed to turn around and there was no longer the knowledge that if I refused to drive, someone else would foolishly take the wheel.

Do you remember what the people who got stuck were driving? Had they taken the same route as you or did they begin somewhere else? I'm assuming you're saying they did take the same route as you, but got stuck about 11 miles into that route.

Also, what day were you out there? We were there the morning of August 9th.
edit on 18-10-2013 by SeriousIndividual because: (no reason given)

edit on 18-10-2013 by SeriousIndividual because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 06:40 PM
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reply to post by SeriousIndividual
 


Well now you have the proper route. You do have to watch the road for dips at washes, but otherwise it can be driven in a car. [Not a sports car.]

August is generally the peak of lightning season. It is best to avoid Tikaboo in August. The best time is generally late May. Lately the summers in Vegas have been dominated by warm air from the Gulf of Mexico, making Tikaboo trip timing hard to predict. Most of the time there will be snow on the hiking route in April. Early May is OK if you are not photographing the base, or if you don't care that some of the building fronts will be in the shadows.

Someone has been cutting new roads that offshoot from the main route. This can cause some confusion for people that haven't done the trip a few times. The only good thing about the route is that the Old Corn Creek Road has become so shabby that nobody takes it by accident anymore. [It used to be easy to miss the hair pin turn.] At one time you could drive from route 93 to route 95 using the road, but it has been deemed unpassable at the dry lake. Given that the road is no longer a through route, the rest of the road fell into disrepair.



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 09:09 PM
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Beautiful job gariac, you are to be commended. You probably have answered this before, but what kind of camera gear are you using? And tripod? I should probably invest in something more than the crap Kodak camera I use.



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 11:47 PM
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reply to post by FosterVS
 


Actually, I try to be vague about my equipment to encourage people to experiment. Otherwise nobody will do any better than me, and the goal is to advance the art. The other problem is some of my gear isn't made anymore. Even my tripod is obsoleted. I will put a write up on how to do these long distance shots on my "to do" list.

The really short list of how to do these photos is:
1) A tripod that is small enough to fit in a frame backpack. Carbon fiber suggested since you will be hiking up a mountain.
2) Gear head strong enough for a telescope
3) APO refractor telescope around 75mm aperture
3) barlow, powermate, barlow plus teleconverter, or eyepiece projection hardware
4) DSLR with live view and focus magnifier

My secret sauce is a stack of two filters. One is a 400nm UV long pass. That is to cut down on haze. The other is a KR1.5, which is to adjust the color balance, reducing the blue cast in the image. While some people think color cast is something to fix in post, they aren't doing this kind of photography. The blue cast will end up setting the exposure because it is so dominant. You really want to tame the blue cast with a filter so that red green and blue pixels are in the same neighborhood. One you do that, exposure is very noncritical because the image itself will not have much of a dynamic range due to all the atmosphere. That is, black viewed through 25 miles of air is a dark gray and white is a light gray. You will need to expand the dynamic range in post.

The gear head is kind of critical. There is a Bogen 3263 on ebay with a buy it now if you are serious about this. The price is good, not great, but it is hard to find. The next step down is the Bogen 410, and it isn't stable enough for a telescope. I have to say the Bogen 3263 is freakin' heavy. I just haven't found a lighter one that works.

When you use a tripod, you don't want to use the center element to get height. You should get all the height you want in the legs. So any tripod with a crank for the center element is not what you want. The closest to what I have that they make today Velbon Geo N series. You want a 25lb capable model, maybe the 730 model. Mine is an old Carmagne model. It was a carbon fiber tripod with magnesium head. You had to buy both pieces. It turns out the head is decent and I ended up using it for non-telescope use.



posted on Oct, 18 2013 @ 11:52 PM
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Thinking about the tower removal, that can't be a trivial job. You have to wonder just how they bid this kind of work. "Remove water tower at secret military base." I can see the DoD having a collection of construction companies they trust, but I doubt their usual contractors can take down the tower.



posted on Oct, 19 2013 @ 07:44 PM
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Wow, whoever says that "Area 51 has relocated or is now an inactive base" clearly has no idea what the hell they're talking about...

There is TONS of new construction going on!!!



posted on Oct, 19 2013 @ 08:22 PM
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gariac
Thinking about the tower removal, that can't be a trivial job. You have to wonder just how they bid this kind of work. "Remove water tower at secret military base." I can see the DoD having a collection of construction companies they trust, but I doubt their usual contractors can take down the tower.


Chances are that they 'knew' of a contractor and approached them directly, somewhat circumventing the usual tender process or a certain company was strongly encouraged to tender for it.

#, they might have even gone internal and had some combat engineers or Seabees do the removal.



posted on Oct, 19 2013 @ 08:27 PM
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That tower was dismantled, more than likely.. Not 'demolished'. Therefore, they took it apart, section by section, bolt by bolt... From top to bottom. The footings are probably still there, as they were probably just cut at ground level, leaving just inches of material above the desert surface.



posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 08:38 AM
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reply to post by weavty1
 


The tank itself must be welded since it is water tight. So I am presuming they had to go at it with cutting torches or saws. This just doesn't seem trivial to me, though I have no first hand knowledge of such work. But I know that any tower work is a specialty. For one thing, public safety (basically rescue) isn't qualified for tower work. At least in radio towers, the crew provides its own rescue.



posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 09:48 AM
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Woohoo, new images. I see someone finally got a shot of the monolith rotated in a different direction. You happen to see it rotating?

The new construction down next to the old 32L run-up pad I find the most interesting, looks like maybe a new road (doubtful) or a new hangar (my guess as well). If it is a new hangar... Wonder if they are gonna try and berm it or fence it. Kinda in an awkward spot.

R.I.P. checkered water tower. Was an iconic landmark. Replaced by an ugly thing.



posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 10:03 AM
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reply to post by DesertWatchdog
 


I was thinking about why they would remove the tower. You could argue it was a safety issue, but they managed not to hit it in a few decades of flying. It could have been an earthquake issue. But maybe the water tower was in the way whatever the triangular tower does.

I didn't see it rotate. Then again, the place was shut down.

Personally I find the TTR a bit more interesting. They sure have a ridiculous amount of vehicles, flat beds, etc for a base with presumably no mission other than Have Glib and storing de-winged aircraft. And was is that Northop plane doing there?



posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 10:20 AM
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Hmm, I somehow missed that post, will haffta check it out. Thought the Air Force said they were flying the RQ-170s outa TTR?

I think the old water tower removal just comes down to age. The new one seems a little larger, probably better pumps etc.


gariac
reply to post by DesertWatchdog
 


I was thinking about why they would remove the tower. You could argue it was a safety issue, but they managed not to hit it in a few decades of flying. It could have been an earthquake issue. But maybe the water tower was in the way whatever the triangular tower does.

I didn't see it rotate. Then again, the place was shut down.

Personally I find the TTR a bit more interesting. They sure have a ridiculous amount of vehicles, flat beds, etc for a base with presumably no mission other than Have Glib and storing de-winged aircraft. And was is that Northop plane doing there?




posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 02:23 PM
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reply to post by DesertWatchdog
 



The RQ-170 flies out of Creech now, though I suppose that doesn't mean they don't fly out of the TTR as well.



posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 03:13 PM
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Have they been spotted around the range yet? Being so close to the highway and a town... Kinda figure it would have been spotted flying out of Creech or over the range by now. Then again, ghosts fly out of PMD as well and are rarely noticed.


gariac
reply to post by DesertWatchdog
 



The RQ-170 flies out of Creech now, though I suppose that doesn't mean they don't fly out of the TTR as well.




posted on Oct, 20 2013 @ 09:36 PM
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reply to post by DesertWatchdog
 


The RQ-170s have been heard launched from Creech via a scanner. I don't know if anyone photographed one at Creech. All I saw were Predators and Reapers.

It sure would be nice to see the triangle tower turn live. The speed would be indicative of the function. That is, does it rotate as a plane goes by? I have a hard time imagining it turning quickly.




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