Tonopah Test Range Air and Ground Exercise

[Frequency 255.1Mhz; 3Mbytes download] 

This is a recording of an air and ground exercise that took place on October 12th, 2002, mostly around the Tonopah test range. Occasionally the audio is very noisy, but most of the audio is clear.

Callsigns heard are:

Goliath    (AWACS)
Sniper     
Strike    (sounds like the unit on the ground, since they are laser lighting the target)
Specter
Reaper
Mojave
Hog        (A10)

Military jargon heard:

Sparkle            (light with laser)
Flood
Umbrella
CDE
PID                 (possible ID ??)
Earthquake
TFR                (terrain following radar)
Crane
Hurricane

Often there are requests for altitude along with the waypoint. Smart bombs use altitude as part of the triggering criteria.

The waypoints entered into Garmin Mapsource can be downloaded here. [Hey, there was nothing else to do while the event was taking place, so I mapped the waypoints. The light from the notebook computer probably gave away my presence. There is a comment about a target outside the zone. ;-)]

Some maps from Garmin Mapsource with waypoints can be found here, here, and here. "Mojomound" is the location where the scanner was located.

This table contains the waypoints heard during the event, plus comments about the target. Click on the number to get a terraserver topo map.