Wichman Airport and Yucca Lake (dry)

Nevada airports

I did this page about 2 years ago. The data is derived from the navigation systems used in the aircraft that fly to Groom Lake. This is where the "Homey" airport came from a few years ago. Now what I never was able to follow up was the Wichman airport. There is a Wichman airport, but not in Nevada. This airport has the same orientation of the mystery runway run Yucca Lake (dry) on the Nevada Test Site. You can see it at
N36 55 42.02 W116 0 31.40

I never found a good connection for Wichman and secret projects. There is a Keith Wichman whose name is on some aircraft related papers, but it's not a good link. Some claim the Lockheed Pole Cat used this runway.

Now "Homey" came from calling Groom Lake "Home Plate". You hear it occasionally on the scanner. Wichman? Who knows.

This link should get you to where Wichman shows up in the database:
wichman

reply to post by gariac


First, many thanks for your solid research and persoanl site - the latter led me to ATS and also means a mandatory trip to Base Camp in the summer - just for a look...

I thought the new airstrip (1 19) was a replacement for the Yucca dry bed strip and was used to service the NTS (althought the circle at the southern end end is strange). You mentioned hearing the call sign on your scanner - if these were from Janets might provide a link to work other than NTS? Whatever, the location apears if anything to be even more remote than Area 51.

Regards,

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


I caught one of the LMCO PC-12s landing at Groom Lake, not this runway at Yucca Lake (dry). [Now the Google Earth coverage shows a PC-12 and a Beech, so the Janets and LMCO shuttles probably do land at this facility, but I don't have recorded scanner audio for them doing so.] I'd have to dig up my post to see which PC-12, but I do recall the callsign of the month was BOOTY, as in shake your....

There are no environmental documents about this new runway. It just showed up on google earth one day. Nobody saw it coming. The FAA data for Yucca still refers to landing on the lake bed, not this runway. You can't believe how much arm twisting it took to get the public affairs office of the NNSA to admit this runway exists.

With Bush now history, I'm going to start FOIAing again. You can't take a shovel to the desert floor these days without some oversight, so I don't see how Wichman got built.

www.co.nye.nv.us...

District 1 Commissioner Lorinda Wichman Chairman HC 60 Box 51363 Round Mountain, NV 89045

I see one of the Nye County Commissioners is named Wichman. The "secret" airport is in Nye County. Coincidence?

I can see how this went down.
USAF: "We'd like to build an airport in complete secrecy without any of that pesky environmental stuff."
Commissioner Wichman: "Did I hear you were naming the airport after me?"
USAF: "Uh...right.!"