Re: Tonapah Test Range Construction


Message posted by Tom on May 09, 2019 at 20:23:15 PST:

Joerg! First, I am purely guessing...but that’s never stopped any of us?

Thanks to Gregos I found all of the NOTAMs for Tonopah. They seem to equate to construction work in the area of the arresting gear. Runway 32 has 10,100 feet available. That stops 500 feet short of the arresting gear from the southeast....the displaced threshold i’ve Already covered... the timeline makes sense... there is a NOTAM that talks about rough pavement near the arresting gear...they could work on that at the same time, perhaps.

As to the dirt hauling... I live in the Southeast US. Many places do not naturally have suitable soil to support road or runway pavements. Consequently we will excavate several feet of “weak” material and haul in many loads of a sandy clay. Pavements are then built on top of that.

I know nothing about the soils there and their “strength” to hold up pavement...maybe someone here does? If “suitable” material had to be brought in...could be for a ramp expansion...could be a runway extension...but 12,000 really does seem to be enough...if something terribly secret needed more runway, seems they wouldn’t put it at Tonopah as Tonopah seems to be fairly visible?

Would Tonopah be used to dispose of contaminated soil from elsewhere? I remember the previous discussion that some of these trucks were coming a long distance..perhaps other states? I can’t imagine having to go that far for suitable soil.

Maybe the trucks were hauling something else disguised as dirt? Ok..that might have been going too far.....

I’m remain very curious about the dirt.


In Reply to: Re: Tonapah Test Range Construction posted by Joerg (Webmaster) on May 09, 2019 at 19:56:20 PST:

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