The island that isn't.

Now and again, Google Earth related stories occur in the mainstream  media. Sometimes, I'll take the time to post here about them.

Today, there's an article on the BBC's Website about an island that's listed on various maps and charts, and also on google maps/ google earth, but at that location, there is only salt water, to a depth of over a kilometre. The BBC even included a graphic that showed the wrong bit of ocean along with the caption,

"Sandy Island can be seen as the shaded area due west of New Caledonia"

So there's a nice irony there. In attempting to show where something isn't, they've shown the wrong place.

Sandy Island isn't over 200 miles to the west of where the picture above thinks it isn't.

And here it isn't.

According to GE, there's a big hole in the world at this point although I had my mouse hovering over the location when I took this snapshot, and it reckons that the ground is 2 feet above seal level, rather than 4,500 feet below sea level. So it looks like some hasty revisionism is going on here.

There is an earlier, historical image, dating from early in 2009.

And it's still not an island, sandy or otherwise. Just clouds and ocean.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Update: There's been some revising going on on the BBC's page too. They now have updated their photograph to show where the island actually isn't insead of where nobody thought it wasn't.

Airports and airstrips.

In my dreams, I'm in a small 2 seater light aircraft when the pilot is unexpectedly incapacitated. (It was the salmon mousse) and I've somehow got to make the plane land on a runway.

Seems to me that it's a bit like driving a car. If you can't make it go, then it's pretty safe. If you can't make it stop, then you're up shit creek.

So anyway, if using the flight simulator on google earth is anything akin to doing it for real, then maybe I could get down without killing myself, at least some of the time.

Manchester Airport's quite a good place to start. I can then try to follow the lines from the terminal areas onto an actual runway and I get to run over other aeroplanes while I'm doing it. Yay!


So I can either try to land again at Manchester, or I can head out and try to land somewhere else, like Liverpool or Birmingam or something. Knowing some landmarks is really really useful. I know what Ellesmere Port looks like, and the pattern of oilseed rape fields flanking the canalised River Dee just north of Chester so I can come in from the West almost straight into Liverpool. Only altitude and speed to think about...
It's now called "John Lennon International Airport" and has "Above us only sky" as it's corporate slogan. How Lennon would feel about that were he still to be alive, I can only imagine. But then, if he'd still been alive, he probably wouldn't be the icon he is, and they'd have called it "Carla Lane International Airport" or something instead.

One of my first posts on this blog was about flying around an island. Now I've found another one on an island called Raivavae and it's lovely. Nice and easy to see. On a pacific atoll, marked onto huge concrete base. Turquise seas surrounded by a coral reef. Mmmmm. I've been taking off from there, and flying out to the reef, then turning around and trying to land back on the runway. I'm generally succeeding although it often takes a few aborted but non-crashy attempts before I finally get it on the ground. Not crashing is what I'm aiming for. Landing on the runway is a bonus. Landing on the runway, staying on the runway and stopping before the end of the runway is ideal. If you want to give Raivavae a go, start here! (turn left at the end!)

I think I'm improving. Even though I still crash sometimes, I'm starting to get a better understanding of how things feel. I could go on about how people learn etc. But I'm gonna go and fly around the island again instead.