Message posted by quellish on December 06, 2009 at 1:06:55 PST:

Historically, the pattern of activity at Groom for flight test has been:
Mon-Wed: Test prep
Wed Night / Thursday Night: Flight
Friday: Collect and digest data from flight, pack it up for the weekend

More than one test a week does happen, but the above seems to be pretty reliable. The loud aircraft tested in the late 90s followed this pattern, and I think XST did as well.

This seems to be primarily for "sight sensitive" projects, but I don't know of too many deviations from this pattern. RH flights are not on their schedule, and don't seem to follow any of the "sight sensitive" rules. They fly during daylight, confined to certain areas/ranges, and don't go far out of their way to avoid JANET traffic.

As we all know, not much goes on at the base over the weekend. The only regular activity that I know of is restocking the pantries. These JANET flights would be a pretty big deviation, so this is pretty interesting. If I had to guess I would say they are preparing for an event like visitors, or a project is on a deadline to meet operational status.

In Reply to: Late night Janets to Groom posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on December 05, 2009 at 10:02:13 PST:

Replies: