Update: As usual, I love my commenters. It’s a navigational aid for pilots! Read the comments for info. Cool.
Speaking of Fort McMurray…
When I was flying in to the airport there, just a few kilometers east of the runway, less than a minute before we touched down, I saw a Really Weird Thing. At first I thought it was a radio/radar dish, which wouldn’t be surprising for something near an airport. But as we approached, and my angle to it changed, I saw it more clearly. I found it using Google Maps, so here’s a blurry image:
Here is a zoom:
It almost looked like artwork, but it appears to be functional. I remember the outside part looking hexagonal, but here it looks like a square with the corners truncated. That part was transparent and probably plastic or glass. It had a pattern etched into it, almost like a solar panel pattern (when the Sun caught it it glittered like water). It was pretty big, maybe 20 meters across.
On top of that panel was a circle made up of many dozen smaller bluish spheres or domes. In the image the ring looks solid, and that may be due to the lower resolution. Inside that circle was a tall, skinny pyramid, like the Transamerica building in San Francisco. It looks like a square in the picture, but check out the shadow pointing north: it’s triangular.
The whole schmear sits at the eastern end of a dirt roadway which connects to a main road. I didn’t realize how big it was until we passed the road a few seconds later and I saw how big cars and trucks looked. I wish I had had my camera handy!
Here it is in context; it’s marked with the green arrow on right, and the airport is on the left:
I did some searching but came up empty; I asked a few people while I was there but no one knew anything about it!
So: anyone have any clue what this thing is? Art? A SETI broadcast antenna? A sooper sekrit gummint eavesdropping device?
Maybe I should ask Natasha Henstridge.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Number station. Gotta be.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
It’s a VOR (VHF omnidirectional range) ground station. A navigation aid for pilots.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
It’s a VOR site for aircraft navigtation.
Rich
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Aw, Mike, ya beat me to it!
;-D
Rich
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Bah. I came here to say it. I guess I’m not the only pilot/aviation buff around here!
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
It’s Hyperdimensional Physics!!!
Really, though, VOR station sounds right. Now, it’s been a while since ground school, but from what I remember, VOR is pretty well only used to listen to baseball games on AM radio frequencies now…If I’m not confusing it with another type of navigation (like I said, it’s been a while and I haven’t done any flying in ages…)
Now for those not up on the lingo, what VOR is (essentially) is an AM radio wave broadcast, and there is a corresponding instrument in most planes (only real use would be as a backup system…when all other nav systems fail, VOR to the rescue!). The instrument in the plane determines the direction that the signal is coming from, but the pilot has to turn a little knob, and a little needle jumps up or down depending on what direction the station is in, determined by how strong the signal is, but it doesn’t actually give you a heading. As a result, if you navigate with just vor, your flight path looks something like this: /\/\/\/\
Now again, like I said, it’s been a while so anyone who wants to elaborate/correct please feel free!
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Yup. Looks like the Fort McMurray airport Runway 25 VOR. Here’s the Nav Canada aerodrome info for the airport (PDF):
http://charts.ivao.ca/CAP3/CYMM.pdf
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
VOR is broadcast on VHF frequencies. You’re confusing it for NDBs (non-directional beacons) which broadcast on AM frequencies. Back in my flight training days, I used to tune into local AM stations to listen to something other than radio chatter on x-country flights.
VORs, on the other hand, give you a directional bearing to the station. Navigation radios can tune into 2 or more at a time, and by seeing which ‘radials’ you intersect, you can pinpoint your location on a map (provided there are 2 VORs to tune in to).
They’re frequently placed in line with the end of runways at airports, so you can fly the radial to hit the runway. In Fort McMurray, you’d follow the 260 radial right into runway 25.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Yep, it’s a VOR, YMM to be exact:
http://www.worldaerodata.com/wad.cgi?nav=FORT+MCMURRAY&nav_id=YMM&nav_type=4
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Keith:
That “numbers station” stuff is interesting and -WEIRD- to say the least.
Prob’ly obsolete these days…
Rich
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Darnit, and here I thought it would be something alien among us!
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Maybe it’s a Masonic temple, like the one in Alexandria, VA
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Yossarianon:
Thanks for the correction. I forgot, the O stands for Omnidirectional! I was actually just in the process of looking it up myself to make sure I was right…well, I wasn’t.
I love aviation, I hope to continue flying lessons in the near future.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Check out this location in Alberta:
50 degrees 24 minutes N by 113 degrees 15 minutes W
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I was near Camp Hero in Montauk over the weekend and saw the radio tower. Very beautiful, kind of like the triangle antenna thing at Arecibo. And, no, the Men In Black did not come to take me away.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
*** And, no, the Men In Black did not come to take me away. ***
Not that you know of anyway =)
–Flashy Things You–
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Since no one else is going to admit the truth … it’s a crop circle … minus the crop … and … well … it’s not a circle … and it has an alien thing-a-bob in the middle for … you know … alien probing stuff …
… and you wondered why abductions are so traumatic
:p
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
There’s one of those at the end of the runway at the drop zone where I skydive. We sometimes use it for visual heading once we’re under canopy.
I had always wondered what it was. Thanks for the enlightenment.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I’m a little less then fully able to convince myself of this.
Another full list (pdf) of canadian VORs. I looked it up before reading through everything, but mapping the Fts VORs they seem significantly west off the object in question. Could be I’m not wise enough or have the know-how of how this is supposed to work, but plot local VORs in google v where the object it and they all seem significantly west of there. Not crazy much and it probably is a VOR, but it’s odd that it’d be so far off the airport while being reported (including past links) smack on it. Perhaps I just need to delve deeper yet into how this works.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Dammit. Didn’t refresh the comments and now see it in the very place I referred to. Hours of work since checking = hit refresh first. Sorry.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm
50 degrees 24 minutes N by 113 degrees 15 minutes W
I’ve drilled wells near that location.
Every June they do a Con, and I made it out this year for the opening of a VR 3D game, where you command a starship, fighting Klingons!
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
_Alien_ pilot navigation aid, of course!
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Wow! Something I actually know a bit about.
You are all partially correct. The structure is actually a combination of two different types of navigational aids (navaids). It is a VOR/DME. The VOR is used to determine aircraft bearing from the station and the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) is used to tell distance from the station. These stations actually receive signals from aircraft and then transmit the aircrafts’ radial (bearing from station) and distance from station in nautical miles. This is a very common type of naviad combo used in Canada. In the U.S. the most common type of navaid combo is the VORTAC. Which is a combo of the VOR and the TACAN (Tactical Aid to Navigation). All these naviad combos allow aircraft to determine their aproximate position (within 1 or 2 NM depending on distance from the station) with reference to only that one station.
OK, probably way more than anyone wanted to know about this.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
@ LarrySDonald
This structure is indeed the Fort McMurray VOR/DME. It sits 2.8 nautical miles almost due east of the runway. The approach plates linked to by Yossarian correspond with the Google image nicely. I’m not sure what type of search you did, but many times a navaid used for an airport is not included in the airway route structure and won’t show up on those searches.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Aircraft navigation aid?? Rubbish! If you locate it using the Microsoft map server, and then zoom out a bit, the real answer is obvious: it’s a giant Goldfish cracker!
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:12 pm
I was going to say it was a VOR as well (or a TACAN, the military version), but half a dozen people beat me to it. There is a very similar installation at a place callled Laravale, located southwest of Beaudesert in southeast Queensland, Australia. This VOR is located very close to the Mount Lindesay Highway, for anybody driving south from Beaudesert, and is used mainly by aircraft arriving and departing BNE. Go ahead and GoogleMap Beaudesert, then follow the road south(west) to Laravale.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:54 am
I found these navaids to be very handy when I was doing a miniproject a couple of months ago to see how accurate the geographical coordinates shown in Google Earth are. They are quite visible, have a point symmetry, and have accurately surveyed coordinates listed in publications on the Web.
(The answer is that Google Earth usually agrees with the listed values to within ten meters in North America and Europe, with the occasional exception. Elsewhere it can be hundreds of meters off, I’d guess due to the use of different datums (data?).)
October 24th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Another VOR vote.
Here is a much clearer google map (satellite view) of the one on the South of the Dallas/Ft Worth airport.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=dfw+airport&ie=UTF8&ll=32.869094,-97.040171&spn=0.002336,0.003237&t=k&z=19&om=1
October 24th, 2007 at 9:38 am
you are all wrong. It’s the home temple to the Sacred Church of The Whimsical [AMC] Pacer.
Established in 1945 (Years before the Pacer saw production) at the center of Canada’s first crop circle, the church has seen its membership grow from the original founding 3 to a militarily stunning 15 in 1978.
After predictions that the Pacer would take over the world and transport everybody to some mythical place called “Dedroid, eh” membership in the church has fallen off dramatically, to the point where it now boasts only 1 member – one Frank Frankson, grandson of the first Pope of the Pacer.
Much of this would be filed under “Christianity and other Nonsense”, were it not for the crop circle containing their church. Apparently, in an effort to distance itself from what it considers “a raving bunch of loonies”, the crop circle has extended a pseudopod to the west, intending to move closer to the One True Religion: “Mopar”, or its younger sister “Cessna”. Or, maybe it’s simply moving west in order to consume the inhabitants of the completely unsuspecting town.
If this is the case, the townsfolk are very lucky that a ley line passes between them and the crop circle – you can see from the pictures that the pseudopod moving west has encountered the barrier and is now searching for a way around it.
Of course, this is taking some time, since A) the crop circle – like Weeping Angels – can’t move when it’s being observed, and, B) everybody knows that the larger a creature is, the slower it moves.