kjfitz: Comments

Oops, sorry Analogman, I accidentally deleted your comment about this being a very narrow track that is only .75 miles long and suggesting it may be a bicycle track.

Acctually I did find reference to a bicycle test track in this area so I thnk you are correct.

These are all part of the Airburst Range. A list of all the targets can be found here. This target is listed as an SA-2 missile site.

Looks pretty clear as these images go. There is a lot of washed out color where the bare white stone is but I think that's just because the reflection is so hight it's overwhelming the CCDs in the camera. You see it often in the images taken of the beaches.

I agree.

That's the Mississippi delta.

Cool. Thanks to our expert on castles and all things medieval!

Missiles or anti-aircraft guns?

If you cared to, knowing the height of the monument, the length of the shadow, and the direction of the shadow (all known values or easy to extract from the image) one could approximate the time of day and maybe the date from the exact height and angle of the sun.

8000th map!

Thanks, but not really my find. It is from another forum.

It is pulling a banner too!

Maybe a tank (fuel?) with a retaining berm around it. They often do that to retain possible leaks.

Looks lik this might have been a horse ranch an that was a training circuit.

The prime meridian used to pass through here (or it competed with the one that passed through the Observatory at Greenwich anyway.) A long line of brass plates in the ground marks the meridian and marches off through the city.

It is becoming an unhealty obsession. When I drive around I picture everything from the air. 1,000,000 here I come!

No problem. Thanks.

English translation please.

English translation please.

None of us here at Google Globetrotting speak spanish. What is this?

I like it.

Yes.

Actually I try to keep it to things that look interesting but occasionally I find things that are really cool or unusual but boring to look at and I post them anyway. The non-perspective views of the donuts fall on the boring to look at side of not uniquely cool so I chose not to do them. I'd not reject them if I saw them go by though.

It also depends on my mood. Good question though. I'm sure Texasandroid and nic have their opinions.

I didn't. Not sure why I said Brazillian back then. I may have posted it incorrectly as in Brazil and later fixed the location but not the title. I actually don't have any idea as to which nationality the ships are. Given the way the ships are in the vicinity are docked though I'd guess they are local, not visiting.

That would be fun. I found other giant donuts but didn't post them because they were all from directly overhead and had no shadow. They looked more like giant hot dogs (which I also found but which didn't look like anything actually).

Click "More Info"

I actually live less than a mile from there and drive that street down the center street a dozen times a week. One of the best neighborhoods in Alameda.

Do we know for sure the Google Earth pictures are earlier? Perhaps they date back to post Gulf War I and these are post Gulf War II.

Thanks

Almost the exact same shape but wrong location. Yours is inside the channel while mine is out beyond the entrance.

Anyway, I submitted yours in your name.

It looks like there is a much smaller sub at the southern end of the same warf.

Built on top of the remains of Anniston Air Force Base.

Um, um, no, it's... it's still flying... its just that the earth has shifted upwards under it and is rotating along with it. That's it!

OK, thanks. I fixed the title and description.

I usually find that these areas in arid lands that are geometrically greener that the surrounding areas are usually military bases.

It is a big art / happening / gathering. In earlier years everyone was a participant so everything and everyone was part of some art or performance. Lately its been more commercialized and attracts more sightseers and single day people. The art installations are becoming more mainsteam and require much more planning and financing. Bigger crowds mean more rules and less freedom / more abuse of the system, etc.

Neat find!

This is a rare image in which you can make out individual people. look in the central piazza.

So I've been all over their site and can't find anything about UFOs. Are you just making fun of them?

What's that to the SW?

I've seen these in other ranges. I think they are the the remains of controled explosives. This may be an area that they use to train people on explosives. Think of it as an explosive scratch pad. I think I saw an area like this on the northern edge of Sandia too.

7000th map!

Cool find!

Egyptian SA-2 is named Tayir as Sabah.

Looks like reflective glare. Smaller cases of it have been seen elsewhere but this is the biggest instance of it.

Of course the conspiracy kooks will say "white out" hiding the entry to a secret UFO bunker.

Because it is back in the trees like it is I was thinking that it wasn't so much used for aerial training as perhaps ground assault training, maybe by special forces. The SEAL teams do a lot of training in these woods.

Oops, you're right. It's a MiG-21F.

A-7E Corsair II (Navy)
A -12 Blackbird (Air Force)
Aero L-39C (Basic & Advanced Trainer
Cessna 310A
CH-54B Skycrane Helicopter (Army National Guard)
F-4N Phantom II (Navy)
F - 84F Thunderstreak
F-100C Super Sabre (Air Force)
F -105F Thunderchief (Air Force)
F-111A Aardvark
Grumman S-2 Tracker
MIG-21 Fishbed (Air Force)
R4D-6Q Gooney Bird / DC-3/C-47J
T-2C Buckeye (Navy)
T-37B Tweety Bird (Air...

Thanks! I just submitted it in your name.

Thanks, Analogman!

Please don't post hybrid mode thumbnails.

I doubt those are missiles but I don't have any idea what they are. They look like they have tails like a helicopter. They are the size of other helicopters. But they have those white halves.

Does anyone know what sports are played here?

I think it is just a target.

Please don't submit hybrid mode thumbnails.

Used to be Williams Air Force Base.

After hunting around for pictures I agree that this ship isn't the Garibaldi. The Garibaldi has a square bow where the deck overhangs the bow. I don't know about the others. globalsecurity.org has a page of carrier deck layouts and this one doesn't match any of them so that may lend creedence to it being an amphib.

Correct. I thumbnailed that because it is just about the only thing in the whole range worth looking at (other than the NSA site.) But I updated the titl to be more accurate.

Makes sense. Thanks.

I'm thinking that the northern bridge may be a Roman aqueduct. If you follow the 'road' to the east it doesn't look like a road. At times other roads parallel it or cross it but it never looks like other roads merge onto it. Then it crosses another river and that too has those signature roman arches.

"Huh? What is this? It can't be!"



"Oh, I see. Cute. Hmmm, interesting too."

Oops. Thanks!

That crane is huge. About 400 feet long.

6000th map

Thanks for all the great maps!

It actually does look like Rose Island but Rose Island was blown un in the late 1960s. I don't think the images are quite that old. :)

The base map images for the Philly area were taken in May 2002. Some of the pictures in the surounding areas were taken as early as 2000. So this was taken between 200 and 2002.

ROTFL!!!

This is a Nike Missile SITE. Note the catagories? "abandoned"

Missiles were deployed here in the 60s. These sites are scattered all over the country. Nike missiles don't exist anymore and haven't been deployed in the US since the 70s.

Of course those are school busses. Type "nike" in the search box. Some sites still look operational, some are gone completely, and some have been converted to other uses.

Movies shot at this airport:

DieHard II
Dragnet II
Executive Decision
Hot Shots
MacArthur
The Rookie
Spartan
Speed
S*W*A*T
The Stand
Thirteen Days
Tuskegee Airmen
Waterworld

They look like evaporation ponds to me. Used for extracting minerals.

Looks like a traget SAM site.

Air Force One is kept secure inside the facility in the lower left corner of the airfield.

Is that a polite way of saying "Idiot, NEW Mexico is a US state!?"

Thanks!

TexasAndroid and I are moderators. Nic actually runs it.

Anyone have an English translation for the comment above?

Excelent. Thanks!

Good job. Thanks!

I think those are target tanks. They aren't flying/ nThe shadow they cast are the same dimension and sirection as the objects to to the SE of the fake runways.

There are target airplanes on the runways just to the NE too.

It can just be made out but there is a copy of the Statue of Liberty on the southern tip of the island just to the SE of the radio station. Look at it's shadow and you can make out the raised arm.

You get the credit. When I posted mine I decided I'd delete it if you duped it today. In the future I'll bookmark it and wait a day.

That would be "Big John." 20 stories tall.

They do that to gain altitude over a short distance. There's a neat pair of tunnels near the Canadian Glacir National Park that does two separate 360 degree loops entirely within the mountains on either side of a steep valley.

Look NW and compare the size of the dump trucks to the cars. Huge.

All of your "More info" links have been broken. They are for URLs to more info. INstead they have just contained the words "São Paulo."

Sigh... at least they used it.

You must have missed the THREE billion spent on the west coast shuttle launch complex that they closed the day after they finished!

http://googleglobetrotting.com/info.php/mid/5784

Now known as the Commercial Launch Facility (CLF). SLC-6 has been modified to launch Minotaur commercial rockets.

Looks like SLC 2 was built on top of Complex 75 which had seven Thor missile pads.

Good find. Thanks!

Google says that all Mass. pictures were taken in 2001 except Cambridge which were taken in April 2004.

These 14" disappearing guns could fire a 1560 pound projectile 14 miles out into the Catalina Channel. However, full caliber firing practice was rare because of the damage caused by the firing concussions to near-by residences. Battery Osgood's gun was fired only 116 times and Battery Farley's fired 121 times.

Eh. I went there this weekend and didn't know that was there.

But what is it?

Based on the straight edges of the burned areas I'd guess that this is a controlled fire.

Planes and missiles on display:

C-130A Hercules
F-100D Super Sabre
F-4C Phantom II
F-16A Falcon
A-7D Corsair
RF-101C Voodoo
U-3A Blue Canoe
O-2A Skymaster
RF-84F Thunderflash
F-100F Super Sabre
RB-57A Canberra
F-84F Thunderstreak
T-33A Shooting Star
C-131D Samaritan
TF-102A Delta Dagger
F-106A Delta Dart
F-86A Sabre
B-26C Invader
HH-52A Seaguard...

I haven't been able to find the one in Hanza/Okinawa and the one in Keflavik. The last two are in Diego Garcia and Guam and Google Maps don't have any resolution for these islands.

What is this? How is it categorized?

Actually it was a HF-DF site. Used for direction finding. This site is still active. Used for intel work.

Excelent catch!

Great place to live but I'd hate to visit there.

Some speculate that this is evidence that some of these pictures wee taken via aerial photography rather than satellite photography. That would explain this and other shots that seem to be taken from quite close to the flying airplanes.

Oops. AR=Arkansas AR=Argentina. Wrong box...

Ok, I just printed this out and measured them as close as I can. The top two are the same length. The ratio of lengths of the top two subs to the bottom sub as I measured them is 0.65.

SSN = 360 feet long.
SSBN = 560 feet long

Ratio is 0.64.

That's an error of about 3.6 feet which is within the margin of error considering the resolution of these photos.

I still think this is 2 SSNs and an SSBN.

Hmmm, I'm not convinced. The both ends of the bottom one allign in a straight line. The bow shadow is the same size or a bit bigger than the other two. And the length of the bottom one is definitely not twice plus some margin longer than the top two.