Ric and I made a spiritual pilgrimage to the Very Large Area on Saturday. It was their spring open house. To our surprise, there were thousands of visitors swarming over the central area.
Most fascinating to me was the little pony engines (definitely steampunk) that moved the ginormous radar dishes around single-handedly. Not only can they lift the 230-ton dishes (without tipping them over), they themselves weigh 90 tons and they can swivel 90° to service both the side spurs and the mainlines.
The dishes on the other hand, were clearly alien. Sci-fi to the max. Ten stories tall with an 82' diameter, they had state-of-the-art supercooled electronics packaged atop enormous rotator bases and azimuthal gears.
The array was wide-spread this weekend, with the full 13 miles of each arm of the Wye being used. The view even from the main highway was still impressive.
And, not to forget that there was a botanist at the wheel, on the drive home I scored some Glandularia gooddingii for my plant press.
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