Odd Palmdale to McCarran Janet flight 1/26/2012

flightaware.com...

Usually the Palmdale flights are on Monday and Friday, ferrying workers who spend the week at the base. Flights on other days are unusual. As most know, they like to test aircraft at Groom on moonless nights, However, we just passed the new moon on 1/23, so the timing is odd. Granted, there isn't much moonlight at the moment.

With Red Flag using the range, testing would be when Nellis isn't using the range. When I photographed the SU-27 from Groom, it was between sessions of Red Flag.

Should ask how it got from Tonopah to Palmdale between 25/1 and 26/1 ?

reply to post by lavenlaar


The thing with flightaware at the moment is it only tracks the Janet 737 by flight ID rather than tail number. So it is difficult to follow a particular aircraft. Flightaware is supposed to have a feature where it will use flight ID and tail number eventually.

It is no big secret these days that aircraft can be tracked via mode-s receivers. That would yield the tail number. Unfortunately there are no networked receivers in Las Vegas or Palmdale. Actually the Vegas link is just down.

What do you expect in this oddity ?

reply to post by Somamech


Palmdale flights are usually Monday and Friday. The assumption is those are workers that spend the week at Groom or Tonopah. So a Thursday flight is odd.

In intelligence, this is known as traffic analysis. You look for changes in a pattern.

flightaware.com...

And a rare Saturday flight. This probably came from the TTR rather than Groom Lake, based on altitude of the initial leg of the flight.

Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by Somamech

 

Palmdale flights are usually Monday and Friday. The assumption is those are workers that spend the week at Groom or Tonopah. So a Thursday flight is odd.

In intelligence, this is known as traffic analysis. You look for changes in a pattern.

Any word on Medical staff going in and out ?

You know area 51 is probably one of the worst places in the world to test an experimental aircraft... everyone is looking there....

reply to post by truthinfact


In over 50 years, nobody has released a "spy" photo of a project at Area 51. It is THE flight test center for classified aircraft.

You can count the number of people that have photographed any aircraft but a Janet on the ground on one hand. And even then, they were released aircraft.

Probably not worth another Janet thread, but I see there were two Saturday flights.

WWW861 Saturday flight to Groom

WWW482 Saturday flight to Groom

The easiest way to divide the Groom flights from the Tonopah Test Range flights is Groom flights are at 14kft going to the range and 15kft exiting the range. Tonopah flights are higher. The routing is a bit different too.

I'm not ready to declare Saturday flights part of the schedule, but it is worth watching.