Message posted by Brian Liddicoat on February 09, 2006 at 9:50:56 PST:
The FAA has apparently given an ICAO airport designator ("KXTA") to the airfield at Groom Lake. I'm a humble general aviation pilot and I was recently planning a flight to Las Vegas for business. I was using the AOPA's online flight planning software (www.aopa.org), which uses airport mapping information provided for the FAA, to plan my flight route. I was quite suprised to see the flight planning chart now showing at an airport at the Groom Lake location with the following info: KXTA - Homey Airport No airport diagram or instrument approach information is available; no radio frequencies given. A couple of interesting notes: somebody had to give the FAA these Lat/Long coordinates and the 4491' elevation. Other airports in the Nellis ranges, including Tonopah Test Rante (KTNX)are shown but have "Position and Elevation Estimated" notations. Homey does not. If you Google Homey and KXTA, you find a couple of hits on lists of air force installations receiving certain types of basic navigation equipment. Otherwise nothing. This seems like a big deal to me. Why would the FAA list this facility unless DoD told them to do so and provided the information. One guess would be that contractors, Janets, military aircraft flying to Groom Lake would use KXTA as their location for flight plan filing purposes, as in "McCarran Ground, Janet One, ready to taxi, IFR to KXTA". I've been flying in this area for some time and this is the first time I've seen this "airport" pop up on flight planning maps. Has anyone else seen the name "Homey" used in conjunction with Groom Lake or know anything else about this?
Location: Homey NV, USA; N 37 deg 14 min; W 115 deg 47.5 min
Elevation: 4491' MSL
Las Vegas Sectional (the airport does not actually appear on the printed sectional chart, only online)
Private, VFR, No Fee, Customs Info Unavailable
Given that the Air Force usually names AFB's after pilots killed in the line of duty, I tried to Google for any Air Force pilots, test pilots, generals, etc named "Homey" and came up with zip. In this case, "Homey" may also refer to the location, as the FAA lists the nearest town as "Homey, Nevada".
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