I was reading an article that had a reference to a plane being stored near Tucson because of the climate, so I started looking for the satellite
pictures of the area.
The area that I looked at is in the center of this map from
Google
Maps, called Marana.
But if you switch to the sat. view near the airport you can see blacked out areas.
Google maps won't show the fields that are blacked out, so I looked at Google Earth.
Notice the area that looks like the letter F.
Here's a zoom.
After getting no images from Google I pulled up the NASA images for the same area.
The 1 meter USGS Ortho images show this.
Here's a zoom of the same area.
I tried to see the area with other satellite images, but LandSat 7 data has very poor resolution, so you can't see anything. And any of the other
NASA World Wind layers only show a blur.
But you can see what looks like someone has written something on one of the fields in the USGS Ortho image, but I can't read what it says. I'm
hoping that one of our members might be able to enhance the writing with a Photoshop program or something.
I have trouble just resizing an image, so any help would be appreciated.............
The images from USGS look like they've been less obviously covered (air-brushed, clone painted ? ) so that people wouldn't notice, but it really
looks like someone wrote something in the one area of the image.
Many other areas are blacked out around Marana.
And here's a pretty good idea of the type of parking lots that exist under the masking.
But why hide all this ?
I'm sure anyone that wanted to take a drive through the area could see what's out there, and any U.S. enemy has their own sat. images that are
current and without masking. I don't see the point of covering this up.
I'm curious if any members are familiar with the area, and if they know what's parked on all those hidden fields.
Is it commercial aircraft from carriers that went under, or planes that got too old ?
Is it retired military planes that are being stored for emergencies, or saved for parts ?
NASA World Wind
Google Maps
Google Earth
EDIT: spelling
[edit on 14/5/2006 by anxietydisorder]