tiabunna's photos with the keyword: early

Far from my Norway series, in the past few days the "big event" for our little town was the arrival of a 3300 tonne barge which will assist with the construction of a large new concrete bridge to replace our current lifting bridge, AFAIK the last such operating in Australia. The barge had to be brought across the Clyde River bar at high tide (about 0300 that day) then under the current bridge at first light. The barge is about half the size of a football field and had well below a metre of clearance from the pylons on either side! View large on black. Explored.

This morning I had to pinch myself to believe that a hot air balloon was passing by - the first time ever in this area as far as I know. You might care to listen to this musical link while viewing the other images in the PiPs. UPDATE There's now been an article in the online local paper with a (recommended viewing) series of photos from aloft. tinyurl.com/y7uopq7k Explored.

Best on black. Happy Fence Friday!

"Rachel" was the name given to the ancient (WW2 vintage) AA3 Mk VII anti-aircraft radar that had been used to track weather balloons at Macquarie Island since (I think) 1953. She lived in a small hut, to give some weather protection, with a radome above. One of our first tasks was to dismantle the hut and decommission her, to be replaced with a new WF2 radar.

Scanned from an old slide taken inside the fibreglass dome, hence the red cast. The old WW2-vintage radar we removed had automatic target tracking: this new one was fully manual. That's progress! But the WF2 could follow the weather balloons for about two hundred kilometers. On a windy day at Macquarie Island, the balloons often did not rise more than ten degrees above the horizon before disappearing in the distance, even though they climbed at about 300 metres/minute ...