Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Winter Light, XVII

Roxbury, Connecticut

This weird blockhouse with antenna towers and wind gauges sits at the edge of a narrow road between two large fields. Apparently it's some sort of simple but automated control tower for what the locals sometimes call Roxbury International.


Posting may be little interrupted for a few days. Aside from the holiday season we're having major problems with the house heating system. Expensive and uncomfortable to have the boiler roaring away but not sending steam to half the radiators, and getting service people out at this time of year is a nightmare. Then I'll lose a lot of today driving halfway across the state for a medical diagnostic test. Maybe I'll get to make some more Winter Light shots somewhere along the way.

3 comments:

Scott Kirkpatrick said...

Looks like an AWOS (automated weather observation station), but hardly a control tower. If your picture went a little higher and there was a wind-speed gadget with four cups that rotate about a central mast that would confirm it. It might be broadcasting temperature wind speed and direction every minute or so. If there were a few short posts nearby with glass lenses on top, it could determine visibility as well.

Nice little fields like this one, with a Quonset hut and a few single-engine taildraggers are precious and an endangered resource.

scott

Carl Weese said...

Scott, I should have put "control tower" in scare quotes. Yes, the four-cup wind indicator was there. I've been aware of the thing forever but it looks not too different from environmental monitoring stations and other odd things so that I'd never made the connection to the aircraft hanger across the street and a quarter mile north. BTW, they just keep the fields closely groomed, there's no obvious paved or even graded runway.

Scott Kirkpatrick said...

An airfield doesn't have to be paved to land on. There is some maintenance required to make it safe and keep it dry, but grass fields are just fine. That's what I learned on. I sent you an extract of the local charts to see if we can identify the official name of the strip. Then I can check the Airports and Facilities Directory to see if there is an AWOS and if there is voice communications with either a local operator (in the Quonset hut) or with air traffic control, remotely.