Message posted by TD Barnes on April 08, 2012 at 11:46:50 PST:
I'm not sure this is what you are referring to or not. Pete Merlin or some of the others may clarify if this is not the same. During the A-12 Oxcart program, all of our takeoffs were to the northwest. Eight thousand feet of this runway was on the berm approaching the lakebed. The rest of the runway was mostly on the lakebed. It was assumed that the brakes could not stop the A-12 on an aborted takeoff with an accompanying drag chute failure, so the plan was to leave the runway to the east side and follow the marked Archimedes curve that steadily allowed the airplane to stop without effective braking. This path was many thousands of feet long, and was marked in dark color like old motor oil. The A-12 pilots never remembered ever using it for the intended purpose; however, Frank Murray (Dutch 20) did land the A-12 on the lakebed once when he blew some tires on takeoff. F-101s used the lakebed to land on when the X-wind was too high for safe landing on the one runway. They used the lakebed on occasion to land the Cessna 180/210 into a strong surface wind.
In Reply to: Sweeping Runway Run-In Lines posted by greatguess on April 08, 2012 at 11:23:30 PST:
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