Message posted by lone wolf on November 18, 2003 at 19:33:39 PST:

There are two places on the trip to the power lines that would not be appropriate in snow, even with a 4wd. One spot requires putting one tire on the hump in the middle of the road with the other tire riding the side of a wash. Not a big deal in dry weather, but you would slip off the hump in snow. The other spot is a pretty steep hill that you could probably not climb with snow and would wipe out on the way down.

That said, the power lines is really not the "end all" for radio monitoring. In fact, the power company hasn't cleaned the insulators, so you get a bit of crackle on the aviation bands (which are AM).

You can scan the base from a few spots on Hancock summit. Use the last guard rail on Hancock Summit as a reference, with last meaning closest to Groom Lake Road. On either side of the guard rail on the side of the road closest to the base (west, or perhaps south-west), there are spots where you can park one or two vehicles. These spots have a view of Groom Lake Road, and are high enough to scan the base. There is a spot on the opposite side of the road (right hand side as you approach the base) where you can also scan. If you have a GPS, it is at
N37 25 19.5 W115 22 39.4

As an alternative, just plug the Groom VOR into your scanner (117.5MHZ AM). Make sure the squelch is off. When you can hear the VOR, you are in position to scan the base. You will find that there are many spots along the ET highway where it is high enough to hear the base. The gravel is one of them. [Located at
N37 25 56.1 W115 26 41.9]I suspect this is not as good as being at the high locations, but hanging out by the gravel is much more pleasant than having vehicles zoom past your vehicle at 60mph. The gravel gets you about 30ft away from the ET highway.

There is a hill near Flat Top that had radio receotion from the TTR, Basecamp, and Groom Lake. It is located at N37 45 23.7 W115 56 34.1. I don't have a good description of how to hike it, other than take one of the roads on the east side of the ET Highway at the summit, which takes you behind the hill. Then it gets kind of obvious. Of course, climbing Flat Top would be better, but I have never done that myself. It looks more like rock climbing than hiking. From Flat Top, you can see the base in theory. From the hill near Flat Top, you can see the dry lake but not the base. I'm not 100% sure of that since it was really hazy when I hiked that hill.

In Reply to: Re: Tikaboo in January? posted by Rose-chan on November 18, 2003 at 18:50:13 PST:

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