I did some work at Tyndall in the early 90's, part of the team that developed the ground control system for QF-100 drones that were flown out of there as targets for missile tests. It was a very interesting project.
Yeah, that's a cool project. Unfortunately I was doing maintenance on the old ass computers operating at
SEADS (which I just learned closed in 2006). I had a niece learn to be an Air Traffic Controller at Tyndall 5 or 6 years ago (or rather, that was her first duty station after school).
I hope they let you try out the beaches on base, they've got 10-15 miles of surprisingly good beaches that are usually empty, but even if there is a few dozen strangers, you don't have to walk very far to be free of them.