Area 51 ATC recording from October 2009. JANET flights from McCarren
to Area 51 and Tonopah Test start early (4am) or so. Area 51 approach/departure
control and tower/ground freqs are classified and change every so often.
No problem, at 4am there is not much normal traffic and when searching
the vhf band the area 51 ATC freqs stick out like a sore thumb when
you find them. I was at a little campsite just off of highway 375
inbetween groom lake road and the black (now white) mailbox. Some people
call this campsite the hidden campsite. The area 51 approach/departure
controller (CONTROL) comes in very strong. I think the transmiter is
on Bald Mountain. CONTROL has both vhf and uhf. Tower and ground also have
a vhf/uhf pair. Thanks to knife edge diffraction propagation, tower and
sometimes the JANTE planes can be heard at the hidden campsite depending on where they are on the airfield. I had nellis control 119.35 on priority when searching the vhf band and flights going in and out of Area 51 and Tonopah test were both heard on 119.35. Flights going to Tonopah test were told to switch to Silverbow Tower (Tonopah test tower) at the appropriate time. Flights going to Area 51 were told "Frequency change approved". And sure enough, the scanner stops on the vhf freq for area 51 approach/departure "CONTROL". On this morning, the JANET flights changed callsigns to "SUPER XX" when on area 51 atc freqs. At the appropriate time, "CONTROL" told the super flight "Frequency change approved" and they went to "TOWER". It took a little more time to find the tower/ground freq but it didn't take too much longer. Once i had
found both freqs i no longer listend to nellis control. There are gaps in this
recording as there were other freqs active with B-2 test activity. I left those out
here and just left in control and tower/ground. The recording starts with an outbound super 46 from area 51 on CONTROL and goes to 119.35 nellis control and becomes JANET 231. Around 1:00 in the recording i had tower/ground found. It was when super 38 went to tower that i searched again and found the tower freq. I started the recording again when super 38 was getting ready to fly back to McCarren. Sounds like the same controller on control and tower but it wasn't busy enough to require more than one to cover both. Around 3:00 tower talks to Ringer 61 who was on the uhf side and i didn't have those freqs found. Later, not on this
recording, i did find the UHF "control" freq. I never found UHF tower. Ringer 61 was a B-2 and it spent a some time in the area on flight test freqs and then departed the range for home.
