Aircraft Quiz No.102

DougRobertson

Something a bit different, but pertaining to air and space, and more global areas. Name the World's largest instrumented, multi-environment range capable of supporting surface, subsurface, air and space operations; and do all that simultaneously.

1. Official name of the facility?

2. It's exact location?

3a. Size of controlled airspace?, 3b. Bonus-Size of instrumented underwater space?

SunvisorFlyer

Heading to Oshkosh next week, but I sure do wish it could be somewhere a little more tropical. Such as:

1. The Pacific Missile Range Facility @ Barking Sands

2. About five miles northwest of Kekaha, Hawaii

3. 42k sq miles of airspace, and about 1100 of underwater space

DougRobertson

Congratulations, you are correct on all questions. I was last at EAA AirVenture (Oshkosh) ten years ago, with 540 thousand attendance then and I probably wouldn't recognize it with all the expansion since.

Amplifying the details a bit, the US Naval installation officially "The Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands" is on the northern-most Hawaiian island of Kaua'i. Air launch's (say an ICBM) target is typically near the island of Kwajalein Atoll in the U. S. Marshall Islands, some 2,300+ statute miles away.

Nearer my home, and unrelated to the exact questions of this quiz is the USAF's air launch installation at Vandenberg AFB, California Spaceport Point Arguello on the seacoast. Vandenberg's air launches are typically in late afternoons over the Pacific ocean, yielding amazing spectacular light show sky sights in the western skies reportedly seen as far east as Las Vegas, Nevada. These launches are generally pre-announced.

I thank all who were stumped by this quiz.