Aviation LightHouse

Albuquerque, NM (July 7, 2009) ..

While biking this morning Ed came upon this structure sitting in the middle of nowhere in the thin air of the high desert just west of Albuquerque. They are scattered throughout the whole country. Most people never see them, those that do mostly ignore them. They are not a part of the collective consciousness like light houses but they serve a similar purpose. Like their nautical cousins they are rapidly moving toward extinction being replaced by the same GPS that we all use to navigate our cars in fast moving traffic. So what is it ??? It's the Albuquerque VOR transmitting at 113.2 mhz. A VOR is a ground based radio navigational aid at a known position that allows airline pilots to compute a heading and distance to the station thus enabling them to know their exact location in the sky. These stations also define highways in the sky (airways) when linked one to the other.

For more information about VOR's go to ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHF_omnidirectional_range