I fly in the Nashua, NH area and one of the biggest landmarks for miles around is the Haystack Observatory on the Groton/Westford, MA border off of Rt 40. It's coordinates are N42.6181383/W71.491861 (or N42 37 6.1788/W71 29 30.6997) (or N42 49.85781/W71 33.25002). It's web page with many pictures is http://www.haystack.mit.edu/. There is also the FAA radar site in the vicinity of Londonderry, NH (I forget exactly where it is) that consists of 3 balls. These two sites are very recognizable for miles and miles and would be a good addition for anybody who flies in the NE, USA.I don't know anything about developing models for FS2k4, and I was hoping somebody might be willing to model these sites, or would be able to point me in the right direction so I could do it. I can get pictures and coordinates of the FAA site if you are interested. I have found some telescope observatory objects, now I need some large radar dishes and radar protective balls.I have included an 8m color picture of the location. You can see the ionospheric radio dish in the center, and a couple of the balls and buildings. The landmarks to the right of the observatory are a landfill (right side of cow pond road) and a soccer field complex (left side of cow pond road). Let me know if you would like more information if you are interested.Thank you,Thomas Perryhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/92669.jpg

Or how about this, could somebody point me in the direction of where I could find the following three objects, A large radar dish, the radar balls seen in this picture, and the horizontal dish similar to Arecibo (but much smaller). I have at least seen the balls in other people's scenery.Thank you,Thomashttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/92710.jpg

Once upon a time, I worked at Haystack Observatory. I held the position of "Chief Observer," which put me in charge of all the telescope operators. Haystack is a 120-foot fully-steerable az-el mount parabolic antenna, mounted inside a 150-foot radome. Unlike most radio-telescopes, it was originally designed to track satellites, so it has the rather incredible slew rate of 2 degrees a second, and can point to an accuracy of 0.001 degrees. Not bad for a moving part that weighs 200 tons. For those of you who understand the incredible tolerances required in antennas, this thing works at 100 gigahertz. (Some RF engineer reading this is mumbling the name of his favorite diety right now.)These days, the frequency band this telescope covers has been kind of "mined out" for exciting radio-astronomy. The funding has dropped, and a lot of the time it's now used for a radar system sponsored by the Dee-fense Department. Can't talk about that, sorry. Suffice it to say that it's still doing state-of-the-art work, but just for a different sponsor.Another task that Haystack used to perform was Radar Astronomy. We think of radar as picking up nearby planes, or clocking your speed on the Interstate. One night, we were doing "routine" observations, using the radar to map the surface of Mars. I noticed a BIG anomaly, when the return signal was microseconds later than expected. Turns out, I was the first human being to "see" the Grand Canyon of Mars. A few weeks later, NASA's Viking orbiters arrived to circle the planet, and they got all the glory. Oh, well. Publish or perish, I guess.

Great story.I really do enjoy when members share past experiences - especially when it comes to scientific research and military service. Having lived in New England all my life, and having relatives in Westford, I am surprised I never heard of this observing station! Live and learn!-Greg

I'd figure that the New Boston Tracking station outside of Manchester, NH was used for this as opposed to a public research faclity.Then again, that dish can probably see a bird at 100 miles....

But back to modelling this in the scenery...I could only find one API for a spherical radome. Unfortunately, it was fixed size and would not scale up to the size needed for the large Haystack and Westford radomes. I did find a reasonable facsimile of the Millstone antenna (mesh parabola on a pedestal, no dome) and an astronomical observatory that serves for the Firepond site. Other than fcradf10.zip, does anyone else have a spherical radome API? I've gone through AVSIM and Flightsim a couple of times.

I'm thinking about it. There are a lot of pictures, but everything is so big, there's not a lot of detail. Some artistic license would be required.The question: what is night lighting like. I found one night picture of five college astronomy observatory. I assume it's lit from the inside, and assume they all look the same? http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/92958.jpgLarry

Typically, they don't run the lights at night. The Haystack radome is lit from the inside by 2-foot floodlights around the base. These are used for the rare times when some maintenance operation is required at night, or for tours. That picture of Five-College (Amherst, MA, right?) would be fairly typical for a night-lit view of a radome, though, and would be indistiguishable from Haystack at night. Good find.The smaller Westford radome down the road (and down means down, I used to bike to work and I know) is an inflateable ball kept up by air pressure, not a space-frame dome like Haystack. Thus, it has no rib structure and appears perfectly spherical. I don't thing that had any night lighting. It was a thicker material and the light wouldn't penetrate well in any case.

Thanks for that. I'll leave it unlit.I couldn't find a picture that would serve as texture, and I'm not talented enough to create one. This is the best I've come up with. If I try to add more "panels", they blend into a blob at a very sort distance. Instead of 932 panels, I have 80. I'll post in the screenshot forum after I have a little more done.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/93062.jpg

Larry, Check your e-mail. I've got daytime pictures of the whole area, but I'll have to dig them out. They're on 35-mm slides, long before digital cameras or scanners. This stuff hasn't changed much since the 80's, though.

That would be great, big help. Haven't seen anything yet.You have my address? larrysil at earthlink.netMy mailbox maxes out at about 4.5 meg

I've done quite a bit of work on this scenery, now. I have an 8 mb file I could email of the source and scenery I've done if you are interested. I designed it against background images using SceneGenX and Airport for Windows, FSGenesis terrain and landclass, and USA Roads. I've included the work I have done on KASH as well. It's not even close to production quality in terms of the objects I have used, but their placement and sizing is accurate as far as I can tell.I don't know if it is worth uploading to AVSIM, but I will if anyone wants it.Tom Perry

I fly out of there a good bit, learned to fly up at 8B1 in Antrim, used to be Hawthorne College. I have done some small scenery work for some of the airports I flew out of up there. 8MB may be too big for my e-mail, is there a way to do it otherwise? Either that or break it up into slightly smaller chunks. I think you should go ahead and upload it!!! Most anything is a huge improvement over the [email protected]

Yes, I can split it up. The biggest part is the background images I used for design.I'm not really proud of the work so far, it is mostly just layout work learning the tools. Most of the buildings look silly because I haven't gotten to learning about textures yet, so I've just tried to match the default stuff in AFW/SGX as close to the original as I can. But I know it can be done better. But I'll upload it with the source and the understanding it is just beta work. I wish I had more time to do a better job. But it's good enough to fly to.Thomas

I put a few screenshots of what I have done so far in the screenshots forum.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=167561&page=