War Planes, a Missile Launcher, Top Hat Mountain and a Sunset

 Monday, March 01

I displaced from the Gate 15 area of Area B, Barry Goldwater AF Range and set up camp in the area accessible via Gate 9.    My preferred spot was open and I basically had the whole area to myself!

I moved the short distance, ten miles, to get better cellular data signal.

Spent the rest of the day just enjoying the warm sunshine and relaxing/reading.  It was great.

Tuesday, March 02

Spent the morning relaxing under the VRRV's awning's shade, under bright sunny skies and the warmest temperatures of the trip yet!  It would get to 86 degrees Fahrenheit today!  I did patch up the tank bag on Yagi while relaxing so I guess that counts as a chore.

I did try and use the Sony HX80's zoom lens to capture the F-16s and A-10 aircraft doing their training runs but it didn't work out too great.  Powerful zoom, yes, but very small field of view and so locating and tracking moving aircraft proved quite difficult.

At 3:00 PM, I was done relaxing and reading and went riding with Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol Sidecar Rig.  I headed south on Road 605 about three miles or so until I got to this:

The Joint Threat Emitter provides a modern, reactive battlespace war environment, designed to help train military personnel to identify and effectively counter enemy missile or artillery threats.

BUK-M1 (NATO code: SA-11 Gadfly)

As you can probably make out, it's a target, not a real launcher with missiles.  I figure it's staged in this spot prior to moving west to the live fire portion of the range?  

Still a pretty realistic looking target I must say, pretty costly too I bet.  I used Google search and the images matched the above descriptions.

Leaving this site, I rode Scarlett down the main access road towards the vicinity of Top Hat Mountain for a picture:

Tonight's sunset display was pretty good, there's been a dearth lately of good sunsets due to the clear skies I've been enjoying.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer!  :)