A dystopic little triangle with a shed and an antenna = aviation aid?

March 25, 2009 1:33 PM

What is this mysterious "aviation aid" and how does it work?

My friend and I were taking a walk (if you are familiar with Brooklyn or Queens, we were on Metropolitan Avenue just after it meets Grand Street, in East Williamsburg right before the Queens border) and we found something curious: a small triangle of land, fenced in, and containing a very small white clapboard shed and an orange weather-vane-looking thing. What really made this especially curious was the sign posted on the fence, saying that this was an aviation aid: here is a picture of the sign and the shed/orange thing in the background. Another sign mentions LGA, which is the code for LaGuardia Airport. I'm not sure if this area is on a direct flight path to LGA, but it would not be unthinkable.

I'm guessing that the orange thing (rather than the shed) is the aviation aid, but how? There weren't lights or anything attached to it, and this is far enough from the airport that I imagine it wouldn't be incredibly visible to a pilot. I also thought that maybe the shed housed some electronic equipment and the orange thing was some sort of antenna to transmit data--but this is all merely conjecture, and now I sit here and wonder idly. Pilots? Aviation experts? Anyone?

posted by millipede to travel & transportation (5 comments total)

The appearance and location of the antenna suggest that it is the outer marker for pilots landing on runway 4 at La Guardia.
posted by Uncle Jimmy at 1:44 PM on March 25

It's the outer marker for the ILS 04 approach into LGA. It marks the beginning of the final approach.
posted by macfly at 1:49 PM on March 25

Wow! Thanks!
posted by millipede at 1:54 PM on March 25

Don't take our word for it...take the coordinates for the outer marker from this page and punch them into Google Maps.
posted by Uncle Jimmy at 1:55 PM on March 25

Or read the sign! "LGA OM".
posted by mendel at 8:32 AM on March 28