Unusual lighting/antenna at Melbourne

[drpixie]

Driving past Melbourne airport recently (from Bulla), I noticed (maybe) new & odd stuff a little north of the threshold of runway 16. It looked like a row of black steel boxes open at the top (?), distinctly sawtoothed top edges, perhaps a little smaller than a 200l drum, outside one on each side leaning outwards.

Just curious but can anyone enlighten me as to what they are? New lighting? Special antenna? Tree guards? Latest public sculpture? And are they going to start turning up everywhere?

I don't go that way often, so I don't know how recent they are. And I don't fly anything big enough to operate from ML, and there's nothing obvious in the current doco. So I'll risk a stupid question and throw it out to you on this interweb thingy.

[Buster Hyman]

It's the Mothership beacon for the people from Scumbury.

[Peter Fanelli]

Didn't we have a photo of these devices on another thread some time ago?

[Lasiorhinus]

Must have been in the More Photos thread.... I cant find it though.

[drpixie]

I didn't find anything in the search - but then I don't know what I'm looking for.

[Lasiorhinus]

come to think of it, the thread might have ended up in Jet Blast - as it did turn into a discussion on certain groups of New Australians with excessive sound systems in small japanese cars...

[nick2007]

I remember that thread - it's a noise monitoring system. Probably tied into the Airservices Webtrak thingy.

[aviator777]

Perhaps you are referring to this thread?

http://www.pprune.org/d-g-general-av...melbourne.html

Seems like a very expensive and elaborate array just to monitor noise? Four microphones would be sufficient to get directional sound info for a noise footprint.

I like the windshear theory.....

[nick2007]

True, but a $20m website is also a very expensive way to placate the community about noise.

[ringbinder]

Happened to be far from my normal region of the Solomons recently by venturing into Perth and Port Headland on business. Both places have an unusual array of (outward sloping) antennas carrying lots of wires. What are these for? They seem more than the usual radio compass installation with which I'm a little familiar.

[drpixie]

Thanks Aviator777 - that's them. Following the threads, it looks like it's some kind of sonic detector of wake turbulence or wind shear.

Now why couldn't I find that with the search - computers