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A Pictoral Mapping Quiz

currykev

By currykev
in United Kingdom and Ireland

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Simply Paul

+Simply Paul

Posted
Posted (edited)

Top Gear test track in.. Surrey, somewhere?

 

Edit: Top Gear - Fun Ford Lads! looks about the mark.

 

Reedit: Ignore me. I've gone mad. It's been a long few days of -shock horror- genuine hard work. Plus wishful thinking perhaps? Anyway, those look like baseball areas, bottom left. So a US base somewhere perhaps? Markings could be a message to aliens (Area 51 is a bit more sandy though) or for testing how well cars/trucks swerve without falling over.

Edited by Simply Paul
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Haggis Hunter

+Haggis Hunter

Posted
Posted (edited)

It is indeed RAF Feltwell and apparently the official MOD line of the squiggly lines are that it's a motorbike training area :o As RAF Feltwell is a very Top Secret U.S. establishment and still not even on OS maps, it is speculated that the patterns are in fact used for calibration of orbiting satellites, there are more of them in Norfolk, not just down the road but in Virginia. The picture that The Forester has supplied has only recently became available on google earth, before hand it was just grass.

 

What the above picture doesn't show is that it gets even more sinsiter in the fact that the baseball pitches aren't just there for sport, but they are the welcoming eyes of a face for any visitors that may come to say hello.

 

 

 

 

 

Alien2Free_450x300.jpg

 

:unsure::unsure::unsure::huh::D

 

I think sleepynow01 should get the ding, as I thought it was in the US.

Edited by Haggis Hunter
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The Forester

+The Forester

Posted
Posted (edited)

That's a ding to Sleepynow01 for getting the right location; and also a Mention in Despatches to HH for getting the purpose of the test pattern right.

 

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (formerly NIMA, formerly DMA) uses these test patterns, which are located all around the world, to calibrate their spysat imagery's orthorectification and georeferencing.

 

The cover story of them being motorcycle training arenas is slightly true as the test pattern was given to the MSF by the then DMA, but the cover story breaks down when you look at the ratio of military and NSA bases to civilian locations where these things are so carefully set out.

 

I like the idea of the Little League and Major League Rounders pitches being smiley faces, but I think that Dan Brown would insist that they're Masonic symbols and that the missing golfball, the third from the left, has been teed off and is now bunkered under the crypt of Roslin Chapel.

 

To get some idea of how much better the NSA spysat imagery resolution is than our Google Earth stuff take a look at the fine detail which is actually painted on the ground. We think we're lucky if we can get 25cm resolution from our accessible imagery, and that's aerial stuff taken from a piston twin flying at 5,000' agl. The grownups, with their U2s and satellites, are looking at 10cm resolution!

 

Edited to add the template of what the test pattern is actually comprised of:

TestPatternTemplate.jpg

Edited by The Forester
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MartyBartfast

+MartyBartfast

Posted
Posted

So whats the nearest cache?

 

If any one can tell me how to get the picture into the post thatwould be great.

 

Well go to your web page, right click on the picture and select "Copy Image Location" (at least that's what it is in FF, it's something like that in IE).

 

Then post a reply here, and at the top of the text box there's a button that looks like a little picture of a tree, hit that and in the dialog box that comes up paste in the image location you copied previously.

 

You then end up with something like this:

 

3950706839_a7389336f2.jpg

 

Oh and FWIW I don't know where it is :shocked:

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Nediam

Nediam

Posted
Posted

So whats the nearest cache?

 

If any one can tell me how to get the picture into the post thatwould be great. Until i can sort the computer out here is a link.

My Webpage

 

So whats the nearest cache?

 

If any one can tell me how to get the picture into the post thatwould be great.

 

Well go to your web page, right click on the picture and select "Copy Image Location" (at least that's what it is in FF, it's something like that in IE).

 

Then post a reply here, and at the top of the text box there's a button that looks like a little picture of a tree, hit that and in the dialog box that comes up paste in the image location you copied previously.

 

You then end up with something like this:

 

3950706839_a7389336f2.jpg

 

Oh and FWIW I don't know where it is :D

That's Queens College Oxford and the nearest cache is University Challenge 2 (New College's Rear)

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