Spotting large arrays @ Google Earth

Identifying large antenna systems in satellite and aerial photography

Volker Grassmann, DF5AI

December 12, 2005 - updated May 19, 2007

The internet service Google Earth [1] has stimulated a surprising high public interest in satellite and aerial photography. Ordinary internet users develop into armchair 007 agents by investigating the details of confidential facilities and installations on their home computers. The British news service The Register has even launched the so-called black helicopter competition [2] resulting in tons of photographs displaying military aircrafts, aircraft carriers and submarines all over the world. Being radio amateurs, we are however interested in satellite images of large antennas. See the following gallery of large arrays and radio telescopes. You are welcome to contribute your personal findings, see the below paragraph. Please note that all photographs are copyright of Google Inc. Mountain View, U.S.A., please read the legal notice on the right.

By clicking the button, you may access the webpage of the corresponding facility which also presents "ordinary" photographs of the installations. If you wish to access the original display at Google Earth, press the button which uploads the scenery to your browser, i.e. you do not need to install the Google Earth software here. Please note that Google Earth varies the geographical resolution depending on the actual satellite image material. Some images therefore show highly detailed features, other images can support low resolution only.

Remarks: By pressing the LOAD button, your browser will receive a command line which includes the country and also the geographical coordinates. This procedure does not work with places located in the United States though because you cannot use "usa" or something equivalent here. Therefore, "mexico" is used as an arbitrary placeholder when targeting places in the United States. Users are requested to ignore this unexpected behaviour which may be hopefully removed in the future.

Legal notice: All web sites which may be accessed by following the below links were selected for photodocumentary purposes only. In no event will the author be liable for the web sites' content including, but not limited to, the web sites' style, information accuracy and reliability and the legal rights connected to the photographs displayed on those web sites.

Submit your findings

Did you find even more large arrays at Google Earth? You are requested to submit your findings, see the instructions at the bottom of this web apge.

Scientific antenna systems

Commercial antennas

Ham radio antennas

Governmental and military antenna systems

Google no longer presents this site in full geographical resolution.

... to be continued

Submitting your findings

Your contribution to this collection is very much appreciated. However, you are requested not to send output files from the Google Earth client software. Please follow the below procedure to submit your findings:

• Click one of the above buttons which opens "Google Earth Local" in your internet browser (which appears to be a beta version though, see the label in the below screenshot)
• Navigate to the geographical position displaying the antenna you wish to contribute
• Click the item "Link to this page" in the upper right corner of the browser window (see A in the below figure) which will automatically update the URL displayed in the browser's header (see B in the below figure)
• Copy that URL into the clipboard and ...
• Paste it in an email to be send to the author (see the Contact section of the DF5AI.NET web site)

From: http://www.df5ai.net