Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Edwards Air Force Base sits on the vast Rogers Dry Lake in California's western Mojave Desert, one of the largest and most historic flight test centres in the world. Home to the US Air Force Test Center, the Air Force Test Pilot School and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, it boasts runways among the longest anywhere and a roll-call of aviation firsts, from Chuck Yeager's supersonic flight to Space Shuttle landings. It remains an active military test facility and is not open to general civil VFR traffic.
Edwards Air Force Base is a United States Air Force installation in the western Mojave Desert of California, operated by Air Force Materiel Command through the 412th Test Wing. It hosts the Air Force Test Center, the Air Force Test Pilot School and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, and is used for developmental flight testing of aircraft, weapons systems and emerging aerospace technologies. For the simulator pilot it is a fascinating destination chiefly for its history and its extraordinary runways, including a paved strip poured in a single continuous concrete run and the huge Rogers Dry Lake bed used for decades of experimental landings.
The base lies in the western Mojave Desert, with its hub at Edwards, California; most of the property is in Kern County, with its eastern end in San Bernardino County and a southern arm in Los Angeles County. It is roughly 100 miles north of Los Angeles, about 22 miles northeast of Lancaster and some 15 miles east of Rosamond (https://maps.apple.com/place?place-id=IE5B0FE907C0D9983). As an active military test installation, the surrounding airspace is restricted and the base is not open to the public or to unauthorised civil traffic (https://www.military.com/base-guide/edwards-air-force-base).
Edwards has three paired hard-surfaced runways, all lit. Runway 05R/23L is 14,987/14,986 ft, with an ILS serving runway 23L. Runway 05L/23R is 11,979 ft in both directions. Runway 06/24 is 7,982 ft in both directions. The base also historically made use of the adjoining Rogers Dry Lake bed as an unpaved landing surface for test and research flights, though this is not one of the listed hard-surfaced runways.
Published frequencies for the field include Tower on 120.7 MHz, Ground on 121.8 MHz, ATIS on 26.99 MHz, and an Air/Departure frequency (callsign SPORT) on 132.75 MHz. Additional miscellaneous frequencies are listed at 135.825 MHz (NASA Flight Operations), 34.24 MHz (PMSV Metro), 30.4 MHz (Command Post) and 37.22 MHz (PTD). An instrument landing system serves runway 23L.
No published civil joining or circuit procedures are available for Edwards; as an active military test base its airspace and traffic patterns are managed under military control rather than standard civil circuit practice, and access requires appropriate authorisation rather than a routine VFR join.
The most prominent visual feature for locating the field is Rogers Dry Lake, the immense flat lakebed adjoining the runway complex, which has served both as a natural extension of the paved runways and as a landmark visible from a considerable distance across the desert floor.
The site began as a water stop on the Santa Fe Railroad from 1882, with the Corum family homesteading at the edge of Rogers Dry Lake from 1910 and giving the area the name Muroc, a reversal of their own surname. From 1932 the Army Air Corps, under Lieutenant Colonel Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold, began acquiring land next to the lake for a bombing and gunnery range away from populated areas, establishing what became Muroc Field. Aviator Pancho Barnes built her Rancho Oro Verde Fly-Inn Dude Ranch nearby, and the dry lake was also a venue for hot-rod racing in the 1930s, with the route later used by the Space Shuttle runway following the old racing course. The base expanded rapidly after Arnold became Chief of the Air Corps in 1938 and recognised the flat lakebed's potential for flight testing; more than 120 million dollars was spent developing the site in the 1940s, eventually covering some 301,000 acres, and the main 15,000-foot runway was completed in a single pour of concrete. During the Second World War, Muroc Army Airfield trained bomber and fighter aircrews before overseas deployment, hosting units such as the 41st Bombardment Group and the 30th Bombardment Group. The base was renamed Muroc Air Force Base and then, in 1950, Edwards Air Force Base, in honour of Captain Glen Edwards, a World War II veteran and test pilot killed in the crash of a Northrop YB-49 flying wing near the base on 5 June 1948. The Air Force Flight Test Center was activated in 1951, and the base subsequently became the site of numerous historic milestones, including Chuck Yeager's breaking of the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, test flights of the North American X-15, the first landings of the Space Shuttle, and the 1986 round-the-world flight of the Rutan Voyager.
Edwards remains a fully active US Air Force installation under the 412th Test Wing, serving as the centre of the Air Force Test Center and Air Force Test Pilot School, and hosting NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center alongside extensive commercial aerospace test activity. It is not open to the public, and any flying activity there requires appropriate military or agency authorisation rather than routine prior permission arrangements available to civil pilots (https://www.military.com/base-guide/edwards-air-force-base).
