Message posted by Salty (Member since 08/10/2018) on September 07, 2023 at 13:52:08 PST:
I was looking at the new GE imagery (new to me, not sure when it was updated) and a number of things caught my eye (besides seeing crosswalks that I never noted before :-D - must have a new Safety Officer...). The tower, on the side facing away from Tikaboo, has some sort of vertical features not seen on the other sides, having 3 large "attachments" to the outside of the structure. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.2463548,-115.8231276,121m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu My curiosity piqued, I did some digging, and had little luck until I checked out the panoramas, and starting seeing something else. The 2008 photo shows it best. There are bump-like structures on the tower itself, 5 per row, quite clear looking at the top row (and on others). Then I noticed the following row is offset to the right and only has 4 bumps. The pattern then repeats. https://www.dreamlandresort.com/area51/panorama_0608.jpg Then I had a clue and sure enough, it matches what one might expect for a triangular grid phased array antenna. The principal is by feeding a single signal into all the antennas but by adjusting the phase of the signal to each, you can form a beam instead of radiating all over the place. There was a previous thread here mentioning this as a possibility. Example configuration: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Design-of-a-Phased-Array-in-Triangular-Grid-With-an-Arand-Bazrkar/916a05253321c58fb78535e4e746f447d6726633/figure/12 A little discussion: https://resources.system-analysis.cadence.com/blog/msa2021phased-array-antennas-principles-advantages-and-types Uses could be telemetry (no surprise if that's the case given what we know) or radar. Probably other goodies as well. My guess is those "bumps" are individual microwave antennas. The structures on the back *may* be power conduits, but that's a wild guess. I looked back at some historical imagery and while the tower is definitely sitting on some raised base off of the concrete pad surrounding it, I see no clear evidence it rotates (also mentioned as a possibility in that previous thread), but as pointed out there it may simply go to a home position when not in use. Would welcome thoughts, comments, rebuttals, a friendly hi. :-)
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