Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Miles between stations documentation

Here's a list of miles in chart form that I found in June 2015 that I didn't follow up on and have lost the source for. I might be able to re-find it and examine it more closely again. The position column for the first two entries, Theil AT26 and SkyBlu AT24 seems odd-- listed as 151 to 331 degrees. That doesn't seem right. What does it mean? It appear that the "Distance to Next" column is telling us that it's 634 miles from Theil to SkyBlu.


DISTANCES BETWEEN STATIONS 
Here's an excellent map of the sort that shows distances between research stations. This map is part of a report on the possibility of an inter-station transport service from the 1960's that was never implemented. (I'll have to find the link again since I didn't document my find here very well in 2015). I'll list key distances that I can now double check... below this map. The mileages were probably calculated from a standard map that has earth as a globe-- rather than measured by doing actual travel. Still, it's a starting point and I don't have to do those calculations since they're done for me. That's convenience.

Let's begin a trial circumnavigation at Siple (USA) on the left. We're only going to be using the mileages on the perimeter. Internal continental mileages will be useful too but I need to focus on one thing at a time-- and the perimeter is what I'm mainly interested in.

Siple to Hailey Bay (UK) is 810 Nautical miles-- which are smaller than miles by some factor.... which I don't know at this moment-- so we'll leave it at 810 miles-- good enough for order of magnitude.

How can we double check that a direct flight between Siple and Haily is indeed 810 miles? How long should a flight take in different type of aircraft? If we're flying at 200 mph, it should take about 4 or 5 hours. If earth is flat and they're lying about the distance, it should take 4X as long-- or about 16 hours-- all day. 

Halley (UK) to Senae (RSA)(?) is 550 miles
Senae (RSA) to Novolazareskaya (USSR) = 300 miles
Novolazareskaya (USSR) to Showa (Japan) = 620 miles
Showa (Japan) to Molodesnaya (USSR) = 160 miles

Interestingly, Mawson is left out of the trip.

Molodeznaya (USSR) to Davis (Aus) = 700 miles
Molodeznaya (USSR) to Mirnyy (USSR) = 1066 miles
Davis (Aust) to Mirnyy (USSR) = 360 miles
Mirnyy (USSR) to Casey (Aust) = 420 miles
Casey (Aust) to Dumont D'urville/Carrafour (Fr) = 720 miles
Mirnyy (USSR) to Dumont D'urville/Carrefour (Fr) = 1080 miles
Dumont D'urville/Carrefour (Fr) to McMurdo/Scott (USA/NZ) = 810 miles
McMurdo/Scott  (USA/NZ) to Russkaya (USSR) = 880 miles
Russkaya (USSR) to Siple (USA) = 900 miles
Siple (USA) to Halley (UK) = 810 miles


ACCUMULATED MILES USING INTERSTATION STYEM MAP MILES FROM 1960s
If we add up the miles travelled, cumulatively, using the numbers above, we end up with 8099 miles. That seems low. Antarctica should be about 15,000 miles around--- which is about 2X the cumulative number. 



AIRPORT AT SENAE and Halley
Note on the map below that there are airports at Halley (UK) and Sanae (RSA). We have the distance for that from the 1960's proposed transportation connection at being 550 nautical miles with a direct route. That should take about 3 hours at 200 mph. It should take 4X as long-- or 12 hours if earth is flat. The problem is that I'm not going to able to find any actual travel between those stations owned by different countries (UK and South Africa). 



PROPOSED INTERSTATION SYSTEM PAPER LISTS "ELAPSED TIME"
Here is part of a chart from the interstation paper from the 1960's that lists "elapsed time" for a C-130 Hercules between different stations.  If we look at only Molodeznayad and Halley Bay, the 2nd item down, we leave Molo at 8 am and arrive at Halley Bay at 1300 hours. I guess we're assuming "universal time" here or GMT as it is traditionally called. The Flight Time is listed as 5 hours but elapased time is 29 hours, about 6X as long. It might be that the actual flying time is compared with the time of the trip including landing, refuelling, and waiting. If that is true, then it's interesting to note that that Elapsed Time is at least consistent with a flat earth flying time of 4X as long. It might be interesting to note how far and long a C-130 can fly without refuelling. Would it be able to fly 20 hours? The Elapsed Time might be a cover for Actual Flying Time. 



DIFFICULT TO DETERIMINE 
I thought this determination of 15,000 vs. 60,000 miles would be relatively easy to determine but it's turning out to be difficult.

11 comments:

  1. Links at bottom of page
    http://www.bnasroberts.net/XPScenery/Australia/Entries/2011/11/25_AntarcticaPak.html
    Download
    AntarcticaPak.zip - 3.3mb


    Follow up...
    I had a request for a map so here is a map and flight plan from west to east.
    West to East.zip

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    Replies
    1. Could you repost those links felix please-- I can't get the page. Thx.

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    2. "west to East zip" is the table at the top of your post, Rick.
      Antarctica pak -
      AntarcticaPak X-Plane 9+ November 23, 2011 Version 1.0
      Information AntarcticaPak is project to provide custom scenery across the Antarctic. Scenery is only approximated using the best information I have available and OpenSceneryX object library. Requirements X-Plane 9+ or greater OpenSceneryX: http://www.opensceneryx.com/ Installation Unzip the individual downloads and place the AntarticaPak folder in your X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder.


      Delete
  2. Actually rick, I do believe nm=Nautical Mile, which is 1.15 miles, not 1 mile. So... (Grabs calculator) 730.330669 miles, not 634.64 miles.

    Do we have areas and locations or would I have to pull out google maps and input Long&Lat data in myself to find out where they are?

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    Replies
    1. Actually, after some googling, I can't even find the locations of the station names.

      Do we have any other way to possibly verify where the hell all those Skiways are? There seems to be almost nothing on the internet concerning some of those station names.

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    2. Hi Mark... the skiways are likely fuel depots. I have a fuel depot map around here somewhere-- but if you google "fuel depots" + antarctica, that might work. The whole notion of fuel depots in Antarctica is highly useful and the thing there is that they're often kept secret because countries have been caught stealing fuel from other countries in a fuel depot war-- from what I've looked at.

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    3. Hi Schwa-- I don't bother converting since the numbers are close enough in order of magnitude but you're right to do the conversion anyway. The history of nautical miles involves a "knot"-- I found out, by they way... and I wonder why they don't now call it "knotical miles". This is hard to believe for novices in sailing like me but apparently it's true. The release of a rope with knots in it was correlated with a mile somehow. This type of measuring MIGHT become super-critical to our determination of the Antarctic coastline. Thanks for the attention to that detail.

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    4. To Schwa--
      Do we have areas and locations or would I have to pull out google maps and input Long&Lat data in myself to find out where they are?

      Rick-- Yeah, I think we have to do it the hard way.

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  3. HA Found it.
    Theil Skiway
    85° 11' 55.79" S / 87° 52' 18.49" W
    http://airportnavfinder.com/airport/AT26/

    Sky Blu
    74° 53' 48.74" S / 71° 37' 38.73" W
    http://airportnavfinder.com/airport/AT24/
    Point 1:
    85° 11' 55.79" S
    ,
    87° 52' 18.49" W
    Point 2:
    74° 53' 48.74" S
    ,
    71° 37' 38.73" W
    Distance: 1176 km (to 4 SF*)
    Initial bearing: 023° 23′ 43″
    Final bearing: 007° 19′ 41″
    Midpoint: 80° 07′ 11″ S, 075° 33′ 22″ W
    Site used: http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html
    1176 km does indeed equal 730 some odd miles.


    Fossil Bluff Skiway
    71° 19' 18.92" S / 68° 7' 20.76" W
    http://airportnavfinder.com/airport/AT10/

    Rothera Research Station
    67° 34' 2.99" S / 68° 7' 38.7" W
    http://airportnavfinder.com/airport/AT01/

    Point 1:
    71° 19' 18.92" S
    ,
    68° 7' 20.76" W
    Point 2:
    67° 34' 2.99" S
    ,
    68° 7' 38.7" W
    Distance: 417.5 km (to 4 SF*)
    Initial bearing: 359° 58′ 15″
    Final bearing: 359° 58′ 32″
    Midpoint: 69° 26′ 41″ S, 068° 07′ 31″ W
    417.5 km=259.42 miles

    Anyone else think with a little know how would could callculate distance from furthest Skiway to furthest skiway and hopefully get an acurate distance of the antartic shore?

    P.S. Not sure how reliable a measurement using this method would be?

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    Replies
    1. Wow, good work-- I'll look at again in the morning and comment further. I see the 359 bearing so that explains those 300+ numbers. Thanks.

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    2. No problem Rick, thought I would finally be a little useful to a post you make instead of just read it. Hope I helped in some small way.
      I'm on the FES forums but it seems that no one there is really motivated to finding the truth the way you are.

      I find that many of your post hold heavy weight in favor of a FE model, you're a real stand up guy man, and I look forward to taking this journey with you no matter how long it takes to get there. Keep up the awesome post and don't stop digging man. I wish I would have found this site a long time ago. You have so many well thought out, well written post. I apologize for not having the sheer time in my day for not being able to read everything you've posted from the start through and though.

      P.S. If you do end up doing all the math and location finding that is necessary, good luck. That info took about an hour or so of digging, then again, I'm not as smart as you man. Also, I have a slight inclination that the real log/lat data (and true mileage between sites) of these locations has been hidden by the powers at be. I don't think this find is going to make your mission any easier. Look forward to future posts, as always.

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Hi, I'm Captain Rick of the Virtual Circumference Voyage of Antarctica. I intend to prove definitively if Earth is flat or a sphere by paying careful attention to how many miles we cover as we travel "around" Antarctica. Flat earth theory says it's 50-60,000 miles. Spherical Earth theory says it 14,000 miles. Join me and ask any questions that you think would help our mission.