God knows what it is, i believe!

I did scroll a little from that model and find this, it looks like chinese letters on the ground
anyone knows what that says?

Chinese text


And if you scroll to left it looks like numbers, 4,5,6..

weird place!

OK, Now to make it more interesting, Here is a collection of 100+ placemarks containing all these digits, signs & target circles.

It all starts within a range of one kilometer from the model and is spreaded upto to twenty kilometers or beyond.

Thanks for updating and subsequently stating the actual meanings of those signs.

Quote:

---

I'm fascinated by those white patterns in the desert, gee, what are they?

---

See Here

Hi,

I've had a look at three of the sites discussed on the BBS. The 'scale map' is, I think, exactly that, and the fact that it's a disputed area suggests military training. I suspect it's helicopter or other aircraft navigation training, especially given the proximity to both abandoned and working airfields to the north. The red buildings to the east suggest barracks with trucks outside, for enlisted men or trainees. The other buildings (to the south of the barracks) suggest offices and other facilities including a significant telecomms capability (large antenna shadow to north of blue building) consonant with aircraft movement systems.

This interpretation is bolstered by the numbers written into hillsides to the north. It's likely these are for navigation training too, in areas where man-made structures are unavailable. Most holders of private pilots licences learn to use railroads, motorways, etc as navigation aids: in remote areas (such as disputed zones) these are less frequently available, so terrain interpretation becomes essential. Initial training in this can be fraught with danger, so the numbers may be there as additional aids to developing this awareness in initial training.

The airbase mentioned in a later message 'now things are getting more mysterious' shows an abandoned airstrip to the west. This is clearly abandoned as various river channels have dumped sediment across the runway. The strip to the east looks like it's currently under construction and the final surfacing has yet to be completed. I'd suggest it's under construction as the differences in tone of the surface suggest concrete laid in strips (you can't lay an entire runway in a single block, it'd crack up and it's too difficult logistically). The underground bunkers are either hardened hangar facilities for aircraft or munitions stores. The excavated material has been laid between sections to provide blast deflectors to prevent an explosion in one setting off adjacent stores/facilities. Clearly military and also unlikely to be active when the imagery was collected.

The final message about the white lines 'now things are getting bizzarre' are most interesting, I've honestly no idea what they are. The lines are clearly quite wide as the vehicle tracks cover <20% of a white line. The 'tracks around the white lines' are more likely an artefact of the image compression algorithm google earth uses to deliver imagery over the internet. I don't have a suggestion for what the white lines are for.

I'm coming at this as someone with >10 years experience interpreting aerial imagery, so I'm fairly convinced the explanations above are good, however if anyone has any realistic suggestions for what the white line pattern is I'd be interested in hearing it!

Paul_Z

&#26377;&#28857;&#24847;&#24605;&#65374;&#65374;

The photo with the Chinese press agency�s name on it has kept me busy for a while. I have a few ideas but no solution, so I�d like to hear what the forum might have to contribute.

I have been unable to make a positive match between what is shown in the photo and what we can see in at the Huangyangtan site. It could be due to insufficient resolution. As an example of what I mean, I have assigned an average height of 1.70 meters to the men in the picture. Using them as a ruler, the lake or reservoir shown in the lower-right corner is perhaps 60 cm across. Perhaps we�re unable to see anything that small in Google Earth. We can forget about trying to spot the yellow areas that might represent towns.

And in the true Aksai Chin I have found no area that includes the bodies of water shown in the Xinhau photo. That�s where I begin to wonder whether the photo even comes from the Huangyangtan facility. Further reasons for doubt:

Towns � The photo shows yellow areas that probably represent towns or villages. If that�s the case, the number in this photo exceeds the number of inhabited places in all of Aksai Chin. Nowhere in that region are there 4 � 6 towns within a few km of each other. There are barely that many villages to begin with. And nowadays none of them are more significant than a group of a few buildings. The regional �capitol� is reported to have had 850 � 1600 inhabitants, perhaps at the beginning of the 1900�s, but recent travelers report it is now nothing more than a few military buildings.

Bodies of water in general � As opposed to Tibet proper to the east, Aksai Chin has much less water. There are a number of large lakes, but the area region lacks smaller lakes in groupings like the ones shown in this photo. At a scale of 500:1, which has been mentioned elsewhere, the aforementioned lake would be about 600 meters across, big enough to spot despite most of the region being show only in low-res.

Railroad? � There�s a dashed line shown in the photo which could represent a railroad line. There are none in Aksai Chin.


That leads me to conclude, very unwillingly, that the photo could be from a different facility. That would mean that there�s at least one more scale-model landscape somewhere in China, though not necessarily as large.

I have looked around as much as I can get away with (you might be aware that my wife no longer allows me much time with Google Earth), but have not yet found a region that matches the one in the photo. Perhaps it is, in fact, in Aksai Chin. If someone wants to be a hero, please find it. Here are a few ideas I have that might help to locate it:

Orientation � The daylight, and the length of the mens� shadows lead me to believe that the picture was taken around midday. Thus the shadows point to the north. The terrain is probably laid out accordingly. Thus we�re looking from the north (NNW, really). That puts the one lake to the west of the largest yellow blob, and the group of 3 lakes to the south of it.

Yellow blobs � Probably towns, as mentioned already. The biggest one has three characters on it. Can any Chinese readers photoshop them clear enough to read them? Three characters means a town name with three syllables (of which there are only a few million).

Roads � The red lines must represent roads. Note that the main ones, as well as the dashed line I take for a railroad, run roughly east � west.

The yellow line � I�m unsure what this could represent. A border, maybe. A lot of borders follow rivers (and that what it looks like in this photo). I looked all along China�s borders but found no match. The Chinese have relatively few rail lines and roads that run parallel and so close to a border, so I�m really unsure about this. On the other hand, of those seven white, numbered things on stilts, six of them are on one side of the yellow line. If they represent approaches to the main town, perhaps they represent defense moves, which would come from the direction China and the town, occupied by the enemy, would be in China, Chinese territory would be on the south side, the enemy on the north. But, again, I found nowhere that matched these and the other criteria.


For anyone who sets off to find the matching region, all I can say is good luck. And any comments to the above are welcome.