The airport's full name is Helsinki-Vantaa (it's Helsinki metropolitan area's main airport, but located in suburb of Vantaa).
The aircraft is most likely Aero Oy's (Finnair's Estonian subsidiary which specialises operating turboprop) ATR-72. Intrestingly, although this is relaitively new subisidiary, Aero Oy is also the original name of Finnair (an thus the code AY).
The museum has relocated in Douglas, GA due to heavy hurricane damage in 2004. Now this is home of the Warbird Adventures. http://www.warbirdadventures.com
The shape hints this airfield has been previously used as (military) training site, possibly a outlaying field for a larger airbase for landing practice. The multiple runways normally suggests that landings could be practiced without cross-wind component. The lack of (larger) tarmac also points to previous OLF status. Runways were quite long for basic (prop aircraft) training purposes so this has probably been a intermediate (jet) training site.
Those are signals for how to manouver within aerodrome:
Line with dots on the ends (dumb-bell): Movements of aeroplanes and gliders on the ground shall be confined to paved, metalled or similar hard surfaces
A horizontal red square panel with one yellow diagonal: Indicates that owing to the bad state of the manoeuvring area, or for any other reason, special precautions must be observed in approaching to land or in landing
More info: There has been two F-117 with light gray paint because of evaluation of best paint scheme for 24h operations (initially Nighthawk was used only in night-time operations). They were named Grey Dragon I (79-10783) & II (85-10835). The first one had two-tone and the second one had single tone paint scheme.
There was an article about the retirement of Grey Dragon II in Air Forces Monthly Nov 2006 issue:
Strange indeed. There should be Ultraflyte Inc's landing field nearby, but the field that can be found on the published lon/lat location doesn't really look like a proper place to land. Both the location (2 Mi N of Jenkins) and the direction of Ultraflyte's field (NE/SW) is consistent with this field. Could it be so that there is error in the location database?
Those are signals for how to manouver within aerodrome:
Line with dots on the ends (dumb-bell): Movements of aeroplanes and gliders on the ground shall be confined to paved, metalled or similar hard surfaces
A horizontal red square panel with one yellow diagonal: Indicates that owing to the bad state of the manoeuvring area, or for any other reason, special precautions must be observed in approaching to land or in landing
Yes, it seems to be a sort of catapult. And because there nothing nearby that is suitable for landing strip, one possible answer is that it is only for rapid exit (in emergency?). Tying up an aircraft that size only for emergencies would make that facility quite important. Or dangerous. Or both.
Approximate aircraft dimensions: wingspan 42m and length 31m
Could it be one of the Full Scale Development (FSD) aircraft located 410th Test and Evaluation Squadron at the Skunk Works. There is mention that at least one of them was painted gray for a while (middle of the page):
I guess those are vertical launch stands for missiles etc. Those slides are emergency exits. At least the Woomera missile/rocket launch pads in Down Under had similar.
You are right - almost. The engines are closer to the body and also closer together. The paint scheme close to the E-3 (the stripe on radome), which confused me along the location of radome, which is farther back (but not as far) as in E-3.
But this is not an actual A-50, but one of the two remaining Iraqi-built Il-76-based variants called "Adnan 1", where the radar technology is provided by Thomson (France).
There should not be any Boeing 707-based AWACS planes (E-3 Sentry) in Iran, because Imperial Iran never recieved the Sentrys they ordered due to revolution and only AWACS Iraq had was the Il-76-based one-off prototype (Adnan?).
I didn't find any references to Iran obtaining Sentry from the normal sources. This is really a mystery plane - could it be a mockup perhaps?
BTW. It seems to have all four engines, the engine cover is discolored.
Those are F-16 fighters that belong to the 414th Combat Training Squadron, that is Air Force's dissimilar air-to-air combat training (DACT) squadron. They operate aircrafts with non-US colours and non-US tactics.
At least the blue ones are originally ordered by Pakistan, but due to embargo in 90's they were not delivered. After a few years in Arizona sun they were taken into use in Nellis.
parikka: Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-72
More info on Blue Angels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Angels
http://www.blueangels.navy.mil
The aircraft is most likely Aero Oy's (Finnair's Estonian subsidiary which specialises operating turboprop) ATR-72. Intrestingly, although this is relaitively new subisidiary, Aero Oy is also the original name of Finnair (an thus the code AY).
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/IN/Airfields_IN_S.htm#jefferson
http://www.warbirdmuseum.com/index.htm
The museum has relocated in Douglas, GA due to heavy hurricane damage in 2004. Now this is home of the Warbird Adventures.
http://www.warbirdadventures.com
Recent photo of same site:
...
Official site:
http://www.kubuswoning.nl/
Article in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_house
About the type:
http://www.allaboutguppys.com/cl44/cl44.htm
About this specific aircraft (9G-LCA):
http://www.allaboutguppys.com/cl44/cl-44-o_quince/cl44_quince.htm
Line with dots on the ends (dumb-bell): Movements of aeroplanes and gliders on the ground shall be confined to paved, metalled or similar hard surfaces
A horizontal red square panel with one yellow diagonal: Indicates that owing to the bad state of the manoeuvring area, or for any other reason, special precautions must be observed in approaching to land or in landing
T: indicates the direction...
There was an article about the retirement of Grey Dragon II in Air Forces Monthly Nov 2006 issue:
...
...
Line with dots on the ends (dumb-bell): Movements of aeroplanes and gliders on the ground shall be confined to paved, metalled or similar hard surfaces
A horizontal red square panel with one yellow diagonal: Indicates that owing to the bad state of the manoeuvring area, or for any other reason, special precautions must be observed in approaching to land or in landing
T: indicates the direction...
Approximate aircraft dimensions: wingspan 42m and length 31m
http://www.f-117a.com/Senior.html
But this is not an actual A-50, but one of the two remaining Iraqi-built Il-76-based variants called "Adnan 1", where the radar technology is provided by Thomson (France).
More info below "Known variants":
...
I didn't find any references to Iran obtaining Sentry from the normal sources. This is really a mystery plane - could it be a mockup perhaps?
BTW. It seems to have all four engines, the engine cover is discolored.
At least the blue ones are originally ordered by Pakistan, but due to embargo in 90's they were not delivered. After a few years in Arizona sun they were taken into use in Nellis.