Cant easily get down the embankment from canal towpath to investigate the thing. Triangular base and sides about 1 metre (guessed), open front - maybe a few pebbles chucked in it.
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Any ideas?
OT: Thing in field
Nov 26, 2017
19 Replies
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Information here may be outdated?
Hmm, looks some sort of "retro reflector".
Tim
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What's in the direction of the open front?
Approximately West - more field then some houses and a bonded warehouse. Dunno how to share the location easily but putting this in to google earth should locate you on the north side of the Union Canal.
N55 58.633 W3 34.705
To facilitate aerial tagging (helicopter) of a pipeline quite often little orange squares are used . Could it be some sort of marker for a pipeline that is tagged by RADAR.
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Could it be so some sort of plough/harvester can be RADAR steered to an exact straight line
If its very lightweight and or had a small parachute attached it is the radar corner reflector from a meteorology balloon.
It looks as if it's pretty thoroughly tied down. Also IIRC those have 8 corners. (inside out cube)
What does the label on the LHS say? What's the box on the ground underneath?
Andy
It is - guyed at 3 points and the 3 metal legs terminate on what looks to be wooden blocks on the ground.
Did not have binoculars and camera zoom not sufficient. Lots of sting nettles on the bank.
It looks like it's collecting airborne seeds. Any GM crop trials in the area?
Flying insect trap?
A friend reckons it's a collimator or reflector for radio surveying.
Bothy for an alien? Brian
..and further suggests as it's a canal bank it could be TiNSAR.
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Well it's a radio frequency retro reflector, ie it bounces back to the source anything that enters. Can't make out the words on the little yellow warning label but they are something like in length:
xxxx xx
xxxxx xxxxx
The box I think is just a foot and maybe anchor point. Each corner of the base looks to have one.
What or who it's for havent a clue any airports near by, as it's slightly angled up.
Through binoculars today made out "Danger of Electric Shock"
Further along the field the embankment has been reinforced with a layer of largish rocks so maybe they are checking for movement somehow.
Sorry that should have said "Risk of Electric Shock"
No insulated cables.
We've installed similar things on the Moon, haven't we? I expect now someone's doing it to us. Vegans, probably.
It's a triangular corner reflector, one of these
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That triangular arrangement reflects any radio or visible radiation straight back to where it came from. Used for monitoring ground movement amongst other things, see
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where the hillside on the left is prone to slipping and burying sweeping away the railway running alongside the river.
The same triangular reflector arrangement occurs in lots of reflectors, for example as a close-packed array in bicycle rear reflectors, although much smaller, a lot more of them, and in red plastic (at least, mine was like that, donkeys years ago!). As TS said, arrays of them are also used for bouncing laser light back from the moon, to measure the distance etc.
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It's an alien lifeform just ripening and will propagate by emitting spores? The markings are to keep native lifeforms guessing until it's too late ? ???
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