How many of us have dreamed that one day we’d have a real, full size jet aircraft of our own to live in?… OK, not that many! Still, given the relatively high concentration of wierdos per square inch in the US, you would have guessed it would happen there. This is a Boeing 727 in someone’s front yard in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Bruce Campbell has built a website to document his obsession, called airplanehome.com, but from the photos on the site, it looks very little like a home and very much like a cross between a film set and my father’s garage. Still, whatever rips your cord!

Here’s an interesting one: this is the first time I’ve ever seen a housing estate laid out on a hexagonal grid. I imagine it would be as confusing to drive around as Canberra ;-). This one is near the Jarama Motor Racing Circuit in Spain. There are cars on the circuit, but no sign of a crowd. Maybe a practice session or a club race?

You’ve got to admire the level of self importance enjoyed by the staff of Australia’s only nuclear reactor, Lucas Heights. Apparently, there are calls to censor the google satellite images of the reactor [ ABC News Online ] as they may be used by terrorists.

The precedent has, it seems, been set by the blanking out of the roof of the White House (though they left the Pentagon untouched), so naturally the next logical step is Lucas Heights! Never mind that you can plainly view the rows and rows and rows of military hardware at any number of bases in the US.

So you’d better get a good look at it now. I think this is the top secret cooling pond – for staff!

Actually, it took me a little while to find this one. Funny, because I’ve driven past it quite a few times and it stands out like a sore thumb among the rolling green hills of Canberra. It’s the Nasa Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station. Nasa have a very informative site about it.

In a sobering aside, it’s worth noting that many of the nearby hills are bare from the devastating bushfires that struck the area in 2003.

No, it’s not that dish. Parkes is still not in high res, but as soon as it is, I’ll let you know. This dish is the Nasa Satellite Earth Station in Carnarvon, in the north west of Western Australia.
Built in 1963 for the Gemini program, there’s a nice ground shot of the dish here.

Yay!, googlesightseeing have posted another of my suggestions. This time a cool spiral thingy in new zealand that turns out to be some kind of a scuplture. They’ve got more information about it and a couple of links on their site, or if you’d rather go straight to the map, here it is.