posted on Mar, 24 2012 @ 12:31 AM
Background:
The restricted airspace around Groom Lake is designated R4808N. On the current FAA maps, it isn't shown exactly like a box, but military maps define
the border to be roughly these waypoints (diagonal corners.)
N37.46667 W116.00083
N37.10000 W115.58417
Violate it as a military pilot without authorization and you can get anything from yelled out for days to being fired. Crossing into the Groom Lake
airspace is known as breaking the box. Based on historical data, an IFE (in-flight emergency) is not considered good cause to violate the box. They
rather you bail out and turn the plane into a lawn dart.
The BLM is the Bureau of Land Management. What the USAF and DOE don't own in Nevada and Utah is mostly "owned" by the BLM. This is also known as
"our land".
BLM geocommunicator:
www.geocommunicator.gov...
The above link gets you to the geocommunicator. I'm going to explain how I made the map of the BLM airspace violations in this section. You can just
skip to the "evidence" if you don't care to know how sausage is made.
First use the "zoom in" button to cover central Nevada. Find route 375, then find the spot where it goes as south as possible. That is the turn off
for Groom Lake.
At the right side of the screen are two boxes with labels "Aerial Photo Centers and Flightlines" and "Aerial Project Boundaries" Check those
boxes. The project boundaries will be in blue. At this point, change the base map to topo (another box).
It takes a bit more work to explain how to position the screen so the top and right border are lined up on the "box". I did that with the lat/long
feature.
The evidence:
www.lazygranch.com...
This PDF is set up with the top and right hand side of the "box" corresponding to the top and right side of the map. The BLM flight lines do not go
over Groom Lake, but they do violate the restricted airspace.
There are identifying numbers by the flight lines, but I haven't been able to find where to get information on the date of the flight Hence the
comment "well in theory" in the title line.