antenna stories 2December 23, 2005
Speaking of antennas and haystacks and such, before the FedEx man interrupted me with the replacement cellphone antenna I had actually intended to write an entirely differetn antenna story. It goes like this:One of the cool things I did on my vacation in New Mexico was a visit to the Very Large Array. The VLA is one of the world's leading radio astronomy observatories. It consists of 27 big radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico where I was staying for the Festival of the Cranes. Normally the NRAO only gives guided tours of the VLA twice a year -- the rest of the time you can take a self-guided tour. However, the Festival of the Cranes people had arranged for a tour for festival attendees.
The tour was surprisingly popular. I remarked to one of the other folks on the tour "This group is the intersection of the birding community and the geek community." "You never know when you might see a bird on an antenna" he replied.
The tour was great in a geeky sort of way. I especially liked that they collect all this data using vintage late 1970s technology. Their data aquisition stuff even pre-dates the cool stuff we did at It Doesn't Suck. They're upgrading to go all digital and they're going to do it seamlessly so the astronomers who rely on this data are not inconvenienced. Sounds like a cool project. I just loved the room full of Modcomp machines, and the nine track tape drives, and even a vintage Televideo terminal, oh and a vintage Ann Arbor terminal too. Remember terminals? Remember when the Televideo was marginally cooler than the VT100? I could go on and on about that part of it and totally neglect the antennas, which are masterpieces in themselves. They're cool and the railroad they use to move them around is cool and I really liked the 9 minute film about how they move them. Can you tell I really enjoyed the tour?
When the tour ended back at the visitor center I decided to go back outside to take a picture of the visitor education antenna mostly because of the Massachusetts connection. The thing came from Haystack Observatory in Westford. Westford figures prominently in my life not because it's close to Groton but because it was the world headquarters of It Doesn't Suck. And Haystack, of course, is an outpost of the Institute at the Center of the Universe (where they give out the ring of power, where my Dad worked, where my brother slaves over a hot stove to feed the fraternal elite, etc.). As I focused in on the antenna, a small gray and white bird with black markings flitted into view and landed on top of the antenna.
A shrike maybe? I zoomed in with the full 12x optical zoom and exclaimed "Loggerhead shrike!" I looked around for the guy who had made the "bird on an antenna" comment to say something like "You didn't mention it would be a life bird!" but he'd already left. A Loggerhead shrike! How cool is that?!? Wicked cool on account of I have never seen one before. The only shrike I'm likely to see on my edge of the universe is the northern shrike and only in winter on rare occasions at that. Thanks to the 12x zoom, I got a nice picture to show off later that night when I ran into people who'd been on the VLA tour at the keynote speech. For the rest of the week everybody wanted to see my Loggerhead shrike on antenna picture and hear my story.
Not bad for a life bird I didn't have to fall off a cliff and lose my glasses for...
Today's
Reading
Down the Bay by Wallace P. Stanley, When China Ruled
the Seas : The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne,
1405-1433 by Louise Levathes, The Edge of Maine
by Geoffrey Wolff
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
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Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan