Zao VOR
JP found this little building on a seemingly un-inhabited tiny island off Macau. Written on the roof is some Chinese characters and the word “ZAO” - secret lair perhaps?
A bit of investigation let me to this KML file which is a collection of all the VOR and NDBs in the DAFIF database… Um, yeah.
It turns out that the this is the Zao VOR, a VHF Omni-directional Radio Range, which is a worldwide navigation system for aircraft. It broadcasts a radio signal which allows the pilot to calculate exactly where he or she is. This is all explained in great detail on the Wikipedia page.
Thanks: JP
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Hmm…although there is a placemark nearby in from the database KMZ you pointed to, I don’t think that structure is the VOR (unless its camoflaged. A typical VOR is a white circle with a coneshaped white column in the middle. I don’t know what that structure is, or what the symbols on the top mean. Very interesting.
They seem to vary in appearance, somewhat. No cone on this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:D-VOR_PEK.JPG
Also, there is nothing visible at the location marked in the KMZ. So I think James got it right.
Ok, I asked my wife who speaks mandarin to have a look at it. She is pretty sure the first 4 letters are:
天下第一
Which means 天下 - this world/china, 第一 - 1st.
As for the last word, its very hard to make out, some of the candidates she came up with were 豪 - A leader/a smart person or 長 - to grow/to increase/elder/a superior/the person in charge/the length/a strong point.
She couldn’t make out any of the text under the ZAO. Can anybody find any hi-rez pictures? If we can make out all the characters we can just read what it is
The island is tagged in wikimapia, but it’s in Chinese. The structure
itself is outside the tag so I’m not sure it addresses the building, but…
here’s the link.
http://wikimapia.org/#y=22243007&x=113611840&z=17&l=0&m=a&v=2
here’s a cut & paste of the comment…
è·åŒ…å²›
美丽的海岛
ZAO VOR? Isn´t that just a little far-fetched? It´s obviously a UFO, filled with little green men bent on world destruction!
Although this doesn’t look like one I appreciate the VOR explanation.
I’ve been wandering for a while what the hell this thing at the entrance to the DFW airport is - now I know.
http://uaf.hp.infoseek.co.jp/aac/image3/aa327_02.jpg
Here us the GoogleMaps link.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Cool!!!
this is another fun thing to hunt for.
Here are a couple more of them.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
In this case the truth may be stranger than fiction, although I don’t quite believe it myself yet. A quick search on Google for “天下第一 zao” returns the first website as zao.com.cn, and the quirky phrase - “天下第一枣”. My Chinese wife translates it as the worlds best dates. Yes, as in the fruit. Searching on Google Images for the phrase returns lots of pics of dates, but none of the island though. And she’s not 100% sure that the character on Google Earth is the same as the character for date (枣).
Great investigation work everyone!
Jamie, I found that the Wikipedia page for Jujube (Chinese Date) makes reference to “jiu zao” (酒枣; literally “spirited jujube”) - but could it not just be that Zao is both a word for dates and the name of the island?
Has anyone’s wife had any luck with the text from Wikimapia?
After pestering my wife for a while I found this article. The sign supposedly says “天下第一蛋” and is something to do with a hot spring and attracting tourists. It seemingly says “The Worlds Best Egg”, and I’ve been trying to find stuff about it for about an hour now because it seems too silly to post. Please, Chinese people, back me up. Its meant to make some sort of sense in Mandarin.
The Wikimapia stuff is a bit less unlikely sounding: è·åŒ…å²› is the name of the island (He Bao Dao or roughly Lotus Package Island). The comment 美丽的海岛 just says “a beautiful island”.
The worlds best egg? The plot thickens
I can confirm that 天下第一蛋 means the worlds best egg but that doesn’t help us figure out what is on the map. Doing a search for 天下第一 seems to turn up all kinds of things - I guess ‘the worlds best …’ is a common phrase. It really all hinges on what the last character is and unfortunately its just to blurry to make out. I guess an aircraft navigation aid is a good a guess as any.
Thanks, everyone — you all rock!
“天下第一表”
Which means the worlds biggest watch
look here:(chinese)
http://www.williamlong.info/google/archives/180.html
Putting Walt’s link through Google’s (fun) translation machine:
“Macao googlesightseeing talking about a strange off buildings read a big ‘ZAO’, ‘number one:’ Foreigners are very strange word these doubts.
“I carefully observed this place, they had to correct an obvious mistake, The island is not in Macau (Macau), but in Zhuhai (ZhuHai) Baidu opened this can be found on the map, called ’states’ islands.
“As for the wording of the buildings, ‘the number one’ good word recognition, But after a difficult character recognition, I think the word might be ‘dates’, precisely because of its phonetic ZAO. but also want to see strokes.”
The world’s best dates? I know where I’m taking my next date.
OK, let’s put some of this doubt out the window.
This island is in Chinese waters. (Not Macau, but mainland China). The island is called ‘Jiu Zhou’. I don’t know how that translates.
The structure you see is indeed a VOR beacon, used in aviation. It’s identifer is ‘ZAO’ as seen on the top.
We call it Jiu zhou when we talk to the Air Traffic Controllers. Or we just call it Zulu Alpha Oscar (ZAO). It’s frequency is: ZAO 117.2MHz
Ben