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Have you ever seen something strange on Google Maps/Mapquest/etc. and wondered "what the hell is that?" Well then, this thread is for you. Post weird poo poo you've seen and help other goons figure out their weird poo poo. What this thread is not: "Check it out -- this mountain totally looks like a dong!" "Some guy is getting mugged on street view!" "Help me figure out what this totally boring and normal building is" I'm mostly interested in trying to solve real mysteries, but "challenge-style" posts should be okay too, as long they're actually interesting/challenging. I.e., you already know what the weird thing is; you just want to see if anyone else can figure it out. Example: (Disclaimer: I don't think this will be very hard to figure out, but for the sake of not stumping the thread with the initial example, I've already done my homework and figured out what this is. However, I didn't know what it was before I stumbled into it on google maps.) About a year ago, I was browsing around the Florida everglades on Google Maps. Hurricanes have forced the military to abandon a lot of old sites, so you can find all sorts of weird, abandoned, cold-war-era stuff out there. While I was screwing around, I came across this: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=25.371832,-80.426145&spn=0.019349,0.027165&t=h&z=15 It's located about 6 miles south-southeast of Homestead and Florida City on Old Dixie Hwy/Old Card Sound Rd. From the street view at the highway, you can see that there's a tall entry gate with a sign, but you can't read what it says. There's a guard house and, beyond it, faded remnants of pavement markings that resemble a helipad: The main building has a perimeter fence around it, and a big gas generator. The main feature are the concentric rings around the building. They look sort of like fences, but I don't think that's what they are: It's pretty clearly some kind of military facility, but it appears to be abandoned from the general condition and lack of any vehicles. I found this document [PDF] ("Cold War in South Florida: Historic Resource Study") from the National Park Service that identifies several facilities in the Key Largo and east everglades area, but none of them fit. It also made this reference: quote:One location popular with CIA personnel stationed at facilities in the keys was "Alabama Jack's," a bar on Card Sound Road with a reputation for "raffish clientele." The street is right, but Alabama Jack's is 7-8 miles down the road, on the coast. Still, I guess it might be CIA I'm reasonably sure it's not an old NIKE missile site, either. Any goons know what this is/was?
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 18:46 |
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# ? Mar 19, 2024 05:54 |
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Secret Nazi training facility? That marking doesn't seem like a helipad, it looks like the German cross.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 18:54 |
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Goreld posted:Secret Nazi training facility? Edit: You probably know this already
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:11 |
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Probably an abandoned and disassembled wullenweber antenna installation.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:11 |
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Goreld posted:Secret Nazi training facility? whatever.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:13 |
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Yup. Wullenweber. Destroyed in 1992 by hurricane Andrew. http://www.navycthistory.com/WullenweberArticle.txt quote:Homestead, Florida ( -1992)
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:14 |
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I found this thing while flying over the area a few years ago: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...=h&z=13&iwloc=A
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:20 |
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Won't you gentlemen have a Pepsi?
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:23 |
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quote:Northwest, Chesapeake, Virginia (1964-2001) Hah, it was being dismantled when I was stationed right down the road. I always wondered what the hell NSGA Norfolk was doing with that thing, since there was only ever like one car there, and this huge open space around it.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:27 |
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That's funny, you can see that site when you zoom out pretty far too OP (a very conspicuous dot south of Homestead). I wonder what other weird things you could find through googlemaps.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:32 |
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ReidRansom posted:Probably an abandoned and disassembled wullenweber antenna installation. According to this random site, the secret nazi cross was indeed a helipad. This site lists the locations of several other AN/FRD-10 installations. The one in Imperial Beach, CA is in a more developed area, and gives a better sense of scale: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...027165&t=h&z=15 If you zoom all the way in, you can get a nice isometric view of it. I don't know about the array itself, but the facility there is still active, so everything is in good shape. Manchester posted:That's funny, you can see that site when you zoom out pretty far too OP (a very conspicuous dot south of Homestead). Manchester posted:I wonder what other weird things you could find through googlemaps. Stathol fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 1, 2010 |
# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:40 |
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As seen recently on the internet. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...003404&t=h&z=19
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:46 |
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There's also what I can only imagine is a four-testicled penis in that picture. I'm sure they'll have that destroyed in the next few days as well.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 19:57 |
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http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...154324&t=h&z=13 The world's largest system of weapons storage bunkers. All concentrated around the small town of Hawthorne, NV. And roughly north-northwest of that is an airfield used for target practice by the Navy. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...038581&t=h&z=15
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:10 |
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The Casualty posted:The world's largest system of weapons storage bunkers. All concentrated around the small town of Hawthorne, NV. And roughly north-northwest of that is an airfield used for target practice by the Navy. Is that really the largest? http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.85...74&z=16&iwloc=A This is a couple miles from me. No idea where it ranks in size but the place is HUGE. quote:MCAAP is housed on 44,964 acres (181.96 km2) with 2,891 buildings, 2,426 igloos and storage capacity of 8,840,559 square feet (821,314.8 m2). obso fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Dec 1, 2010 |
# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:21 |
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About 20 miles south-west of area 51 there is this http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...154324&t=h&z=13 Some of the craters are the size of city blocks, but I don't think these are nuclear test sites seeing how close to each other they are.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:25 |
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ZebraBlade posted:About 20 miles south-west of area 51 there is this
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:28 |
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obso posted:Is that really the largest? quote:Hawthorne Army Depot is a U.S. Army ammunition storage site located near the town of Hawthorne in western Nevada in the United States. It is directly south of Walker Lake. The depot covers 147,000 acres (59,000 ha) and has 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) storage space in 2,427 bunkers. It is said[by whom?] to be the largest such facility in the world. So if the source is to be believed, Hawthorne's is 100,000 acres larger in area, but has less overall storage space than MCAAP. I guess we are both half-right VV
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:37 |
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Also http://maps.google.com/maps?source=...2,0.077162&z=14 Lots of airplanes just sitting around. Why? I do not know.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:37 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Also Wanna go there so loving bad.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:40 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Some of the craters are the size of city blocks, but I don't think these are nuclear test sites seeing how close to each other they are. Yep, underground nuclear test. If you pan to the north there's a larger, labeled crater, which links to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_%28nuclear_test%29
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:42 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Also That's the Davis-Monthan boneyard. It's where old military aircraft go to die. They are in various stages of preservation or decay over there. Hundreds of old fighters, transports, and bombers, many stripped of their repairable components and pretty much left to bleach in the sun. There's also a huge junkyard with rocket parts, booster rings, nosecones and the like, and rows of Connex boxes full of who-knows-what. It's operated by the USAF's 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or AMARG.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:48 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Also The same thing happens when they mothball naval ships. They keep them in (nearly) operating condition just in case some unforeseen event requires more airplanes or ships than we have in active service. And some of them are used for parts. It's the most meticulously maintained white trash front-yard in the world.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:50 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Lots of airplanes just sitting around. Why? I do not know. That would be the Boneyard. It's where airplanes go when they're too old to be useful or no longer efficiently repairable. I have heard of a few being ressurected from there recently though.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:52 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Also Isn't that an aircraft graveyard? that would explain why theres just airplanes sitting around.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:53 |
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I guess when I thought airplane graveyard I was thinking old poo poo that was falling apart and strewn about, not nicely lined up and looking is pretty good condition. They need to re-do junkyard wars with NASA engineers and have it set at that place
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:55 |
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ZebraBlade posted:Also
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:57 |
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This is a landing site for space Jews. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...3,0.024676&z=16 An old Navy training facility. It is hard to land a, inter-war taildragger airplane in a crosswind, so they built runways such that there would always be two that were the right-way to the wind. It is still used for helicopter training
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 20:59 |
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All of this can be explained with low flying missles.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:13 |
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Bing Maps has a better aerial view of the antenna site in the OP
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:15 |
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kiimo posted:Won't you gentlemen have a Pepsi? Why am I here? Why are you here? Why is anybody here? I think it was Jean-Paul Sartre who once said... how do you spell spell Sartre?
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:19 |
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Stathol posted:That was much faster than I expected. You are correct. Apparently this is "NSGA Homestead AN/FRD-10 Array, Site Alpha". The AN/FRD-10 was a Circularly Disposed Antenna Array (CDDA), a.k.a. a Wullenweber. Basically, it was used a directional locator for radio transmissions, partly for COMNAVSECGRU (naval SIGINT), particularly for locating transmissions from Soviet subs, and also to locate the source of naval distress beacons for search & rescue. It was abandoned in 1993 due to hurricane damage. The antenna array really does resemble a series of fences, and were colloquially referred to as "elephent cages". Yeah, they're all over the place. There are remains of several pretty big ones on Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Also one at Misawa AFB, one in Germany somewhere I recall. Bit puzzling if you don't know what you're looking at though.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:20 |
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Slo-Tek posted:This is a landing site for space Jews.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:22 |
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http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou....04077&t=h&z=15 The Mirny Diamond Mine, second largest excavated hole in the world. The airspace over the mine is closed, due to reports of helicopters getting sucked into it. Edit: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=40.52,-112.15&ie=UTF8&ll=40.534155,-112.129555&spn=0.068103,0.163078&z=13 This of course got me interested in what the largest excavated hole in the world was. That would be the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine outside of Salt Lake City. nildrohain454 fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Dec 1, 2010 |
# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:35 |
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http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...z=16&iwloc=addr One of the worlds largest ship graveyards.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:35 |
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DIRECTIONS
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:37 |
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Forums Medic posted:DIRECTIONS Even better, try getting directions from the USA to Japan. Check direction #27.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:46 |
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Here is an 1:1 scale model of the Bismarck made out of dirt in the middle of the Desert in the US. http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&sour...011319&t=h&z=17
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:52 |
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swolf posted:Even better, try getting directions from the USA to Japan. Check direction #27. The best part is actually #28: Continue straight.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:54 |
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# ? Mar 19, 2024 05:54 |
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It's an oldie, and easily identifiable but the KFC logo at 37.646069, -115.750710.
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# ? Dec 1, 2010 21:57 |