Message posted by Nelson on January 07, 2009 at 6:13:31 PST:
Thanks again for all the input I received from you guys, it was a great help in dealing with some friends of mine, who, to my surprise, turned out to be only borderine rational on certain subjects.
Now I have a question about some features I noticed on the high resolution pictures of Groom Lake. If you look closely at the runway threshold of 32R, approx 50 feet south of the end of the runway, there seems to be an arresting cable across the paved overrun area. About seventy five feet further south there seems to be an arresting net suspended across the overrrun strip, the layout is very similar to the catch nets and arresting cables used for recovering UAV's, or the emergency nets used on aircraft carriers, but this is on a much larger scale. It looks to me like a system they've deployed to keep an aircraft landing on 14 L from overrunning the runway.
I realize the complications involved if this really is such a system. For one thing, the net would be 150 feet wide, that's one huge net. Another thing, a plane landing on 32 R would have to clear the net on their approach, if that is a catch net I would guess it's between thirty and fifty feet high. However, I've noticed from the rubber on the runway that the aircraft landing on 32 R are touching down a long way from the actual threshold, could this be an explanation for that?
So my questions are, number one, could this really be such a system? Number two, is anyone aware of any special precautions being taken by pilots about landing long on runway 32 R?
Thanks again for your help, I've included a link to a labeled picture of the features, if I'm wrong and someone knows for sure what this is, please let me know, as long as it's not classified or something like that, of course.
Replies: