Message posted by lone wolf on March 07, 2005 at 23:45:38 PST:

I think you are onto something regarding PYD being related to Pyramid, though fixes are 5 letters. I've heard the "clear to Pyramid" also. The only thing I could find on the map was Pyramid Lake and the nearby fix PYRAM, but that is too far away. There must be a pyramid departure plan on file for the operation near Groom Lake. As a long shot, you might try to FOIA to get the route. The FOIA office needs the entertainment. ;-)I'm sure my request for the FLIMSY got a few chuckles.

I wasn't able to get a clean "null" on the PYD beacon, so I'm not really sure where it is located other than in the direction of Groom Lake. For VLF NDBs, you really can't trust signal strength since the signal bounces around and skips. It's different from VOR like the MCY beacon. [Not to be confused with the MCY NDB at 326KHz, which incidentally is working again.] I was searching for TIS (travellers information system) at Groom, on the outside chance they have one. Some bases have a TIS that announces things like the threat level, etc. Anyway, I didn't find a TIS at Groom, but the TIS of LAX came through rather clear considering it was 400 miles away and only has 15 watts. The LAX TIS is at 530Khz, just a bit above the beacon band, but the propagation is similar.

I'm going to try to listen to PYD from the powerlines, where I may get a cleaner path.

In Reply to: PYD beacon posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on March 07, 2005 at 22:14:45 PST:

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