Message posted by lone wolf on April 05, 2004 at 20:50:08 PST:

I'm going to see if I can borrow a handheld from someone whose plane is being repaired. No DME, just a bearing. From Tikaboo, a bearing would be pretty accurate since the base is fanned out in front of you, though the hill could jumble the reading.

Pilots tell me that reflections can really screw up VOR readings. In some places where the airport has tall buildings, the VOR is offsite, such as is the case with EDW. The Beaty VOR is some distance from the airport as well due to the hills near the airport.

Incidentally, I'm quite sure the Groom tower radio is not located on the base, but rather some hill. It has way too much coverage for a transmitter located on the ground. The VOR has more coverage than I would expect from something on the ground as you can hear it from the gravel by the highway, though maybe that is a reflection we hear. VORs are not supposed to have much of a ground wave if enginnered well, again to avoid reflections.

Regarding hearing signals from Groom, the relatively quiet RF environment makes it easier to hear radio signals than in urban areas. I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I was bandscanning mil air and heard something distorted at 263.925MHZ. I flipped the radio from AM to NFM, and it turned out to be an air force SATCOM channel, though everyone was speaking in Spanish. [Go figure, probably bootleggers.] This was just with the MVT7100 and my RA Miller AT-256, which has a good impedance match in the mil air band, but no gain.

I'm going to try to monitor the 75Mhz signals at local airports to get a base line, then I'll check out the same signals at Groom.

The link provided has photos of the various navaids, with the exception of a Tacan, but those are so small I doubt you could see one at Groom from Tikaboo.

In Reply to: Re: Groom VOR posted by Dave Bethke on April 05, 2004 at 17:31:44 PST:

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