Radio Telescope Array and Field Station

A radio astronomy field station on open steppe, laid out as one working site rather than a lineup. The track comes in from the south over a cattle grid and through the vehicle gate in the perimeter fence, past the blank visitor board and the windsock, and runs up to the hardstanding apron in the middle of the plot.

What is placed

Thirteen parabolic dishes stand across the northern half: two nine metre reflectors, four six metre and seven three metre, each turned to its own bearing so the field reads as instruments tracking rather than a row of parked mounts. A traverse rail runs down the east side with the bogie part way along it, the dish transporter at the rail head, and a pedestal, counterweights and a feed horn assembly laid out on the ground for a mount that is still going up. The low band antenna field takes the western quarter: nine dipole panels on one bearing, a row of log periodic booms and six small horn antennas. Open cable trenches run down from the dish field to the junction pits and on under cover to the correlator, so the groups read as one installation and not as separate props.

The middle of the site is the technical row: the control room cabin with its desk of blank screens, the correlator beside it, two signal racks, cryogenic receiver dewars and a service ladder. Behind them stands the plant line of helium compressor, diesel generator, battery shed, bulk fuel tanks and solar arrays. The service yard holds the spares racks, crate stacks, the forklift and the pickups. The crew cabins, site office, mess and two bunk cabins, sit inside the fence with the water tanks and the septic covers, and the weather and timing pad carries the anemometer mast, a tipping bucket rain gauge, the all sky camera and the GPS reference pillar. Scrub clumps, boulders and survey markers dress the open ground corner to corner, and two guyed masts give the plot its other verticals.

All fifty four published models in the pack are placed, 375 instances in total, for about one megabyte of GLB and roughly nineteen thousand triangles.

What moves

Each dish slews in azimuth and tilts in elevation as two separate named nodes. The rail bogie traverses its track and its deck clamps open, the transporter and the pickups roll on their own wheels, and the forklift lifts its mast as well as rolling. Cabin and shed doors swing, the signal rack and spares rack fronts open, the junction pit lid lifts, the anemometer spins, the all sky camera dome rotates and the vehicle gate swings. Twenty of the models carry clips and every one of them stands beside the walk.

What does not move, and why

Cabling, the guy wires on the masts, the windsock and the content of every screen are static geometry. Flexible material and a display need a joint per element or a shader, and neither is reachable with the one rigid node transform this library uses. There are no people anywhere on the site: the pack has no skinned meshes. The dishes vary in bearing but their elevation poses are part of the geometry, so a dish tilts only while its clip plays.

Every sign, board, screen and plate here is blank by design. This is a generic field station, not a real observatory, array or project, and nothing on it is named after one.

Every piece here is a published model from the pack, placed by hand. Walk with the keys or touch, and approach a piece to see it move if it has animation. Colliders, navigation and gameplay are yours to add.