What is this? Found on Google Earth

Thanks Graeme looks like most have a similar view to you.

Cheers

Dunc.

Hi Alan the image at the coordinates given show a huge runway running in a NE and at the Northerly end another runway joining going in a South westerly direction. Very wide and what appears to be landing lights along one side.

Cheers

Dunc

Alan I've just had another look and what I thought was a runway could actually be the radar if it is made up of a large number of poles with wires strung between (only guessing about the wires).

D

One way to find out Dunc, Good luck :-)

Me thinks a good way to get shot at if you get too close.

Mind you sounds like a good excuse for a road trip.

Duncan, that's a pretty tight corner half way down the runway!

The Yanks came in on the project fairly early, then dropped out saying it would never work!

A bit of good old Aussie ingenuity.

We've also had a few other aeronautical firsts: Domestic DME (before international was created), the Flight Data Recorder, and the Microwave Landing System (MLS).

We have some pretty talented people here in Oz.

The SCRAM Jet will be next, the Brisbane Uni is having some success at the moment, although the last test failed,

Thanks Ron for your advice and the follow-ups from Notso & Jarse. Until today's replys I'd never heard of the Jindalee Operational radar

Cheers

Dunc

Yes, it's interesting what Jindalee can pick up.

Like when the Indos sneak a military aircraft up behind a commercial passenger jet over the Kimberley, just to see how far they can get into Aussie airspace.

And icebergs in the North Sea.

Maybe them pesky Indon fishermen have been sneaking "people ferries" in behind cargo ships???

Just saying (;=))

Cheers
Pop

"JORN uses radio frequencies between 5 and 30 MHz." (Same as my Codan)

"The high frequency radio transmitter arrays at Longreach and Laverton have 28 elements, each driven by a 20 kilowatt power amplfier giving a total power of 560 kW." (6000 times as powerful as my Codan)

No wonder the HF spectrum is so full of weird interference.

With ionospheric conditions so variable its a marvel that a reflected HF signal can yield any useful data at all, let alone 'seeing' a Cessna taxi somewhere in Indonesia.

No doubt the Chinese, Russians and Israelis are doing similar things to the HF spectrum. Not to mention the Indonesian fishing boats with their kilowatt linears.

Come to think of it, its a miracle that we can use HF for communications at all.

Bob

Bob, don't even start to think about what's being transmitted on the radio frequencies, from Harold Holt base at NW Cape!

There's still a lot of deep suspicion that some of their high-powered RF output from NW cape was responsible for the unplanned dive problems on a couple of Airbuses!

"There's still a lot of deep suspicion that some of their high-powered RF output from NW cape was responsible for the unplanned dive problems on a couple of Airbuses!"

Yeah.....but that was over shadowed by the news when Pine Gap was proven to be a submarine base! LOL

Darian - Coal?? At Laverton, W.A.?? That's news to me - as well as about 10,000 geologists! [;-)

Are you sure you're talking about the right Laverton??

There are two Jindalee sites out from Laverton - one for the transmitter and one for the receiver.

Duncs GE co-ordinates match the Jindalee receiver site.

http://maps.spench.net/rf/#pos=-28.3256026,122.0077937

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Network

It's tagged in Google Earth as the Jindalee recieve site.

"It was a 'what the heck' moment Ron - worth a shot I thought...it's quiet here today.... lucky I'm not in mining :-o)......but I spotted this black stuff about 8km from Laverton...... it looked a bit 'coaly'. 28°33'26.41"S 122°22'28.07"E ...... maybe nickel ?

Darian - I doubt whether your "black stuff" is nickel. There's definitely Nickel in quantities around Laverton.
Nickel is found as Nickel Sulphide and is never black - more generally, a motley, greenish-bronze colour.
You can always tell you've got Nickel Sulphide, because it's so much heavier than any other ordinary rock. It's S.G. is around 1.6-1.8.

Here's a pic of Nickel Sulphide ore (link below) - it's not a really good pic, but the best I can find at present.
I had some top class Nickel Sulphide specimens from around Kambalda once, but I couldn't tell you where they are now.

http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/index.cfm?event=site.image.thumbnail&id=1893&viewfile=f&divid=NM

A black rock from around Laverton is more likely to be an Iron-rich rock, possibly Hematite or Magnetite. There's a lot of Iron associated with Gold in the W.A. Goldfields, and its common form is Banded Iron Formation (BIF), which often has some very intense black-coloured Iron-compound rocks in it.
A big chunk of the really dark Hematite from a thick band of BIF would give you a rock that looked just like coal.

Cheers - Ron.

Ron for some unknown reason my GE at work doesn't always allow some of the attached GE photos to be opened. If they did no doubt I'd have discovered that it was Jindalee, which then would have caused me to do a Google Search. Damned impressive the amount of money they are throwing at this site based on the aerial image

Cheers

D

Sg of nickel sulphide is much more than 2.6 to 2.8. Thats the sg of normal rock nickel sulphide can be around 4.5 in its massive form

Get outmore - Where do you get those figures from? This following chart shows the S.G. of Nickel ore at 1.6.

I've worked in Nickel mines and loaded and hauled thousands of tonnes of Nickel ore, so I know exactly how much it weighs!

http://www.csgnetwork.com/specificgravmattable.html

From doing countless sg determinations on countless samples of nickel sulphide and its host rock....

You win!! LOL I must have been handling a lot of low-grade nickel ore!

You'd have to have some high nickel % concentrations in the massive sulphides to get S.G.'s of up to 4.5!
What % of nickel content would bring up that figure? I reckon I've seen about 5% nickel in massive sulphides.

ive hadf a look at that chrt you linked to and it has some inconsistencies

at an of 1.6 is not much denser than water really

from memory while the sg of mnormal rock types such as basalt, diiorite dolerite can vary alot its generally somewhere between 1.8-2.6

diseminated pentlandite at around 3% will go an sg of around 3-3.5

and massisive pentlandite %10 and above or so will go around sg4.5

Hi Wayne, the GE image is pretty clear when you zoom right in and you're right about the number of tracks that appear to head to other infrastructure.

Pretty amazing facility and no doubt well guarded. What surprises me is that such a facility is so close to mining operations.