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Location of Historical Beacon Sites, 2000

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SPONSOR: Federal Aviation Administration
VOLPE INTERNAL: Environmental Engineering Division, DTS-33

The purpose of this project was to locate abandoned radio, fan, and light beacons across the country. To do this, old navigation charts printed in the 1940's were scanned and then geographically registered by matching latitude and longitude indicators on the charts with their counterparts in the GIS. The location of each beacon, as represented on the charts, was marked in the GIS. By superimposing existing roads, towns and other landmarks, as well as digital elevation data, the location of the indicated beacons on the charts could be located in the current terrain. FAA inspectors loaded these GIS data into laptop computers and looked for the beacons to inspect for old fuel or other environmental pollution. This effort located the beacons within a maximum of two miles from their true location. The GIS specified location of most of the beacons were less than one half mile off.

A sample of the projected locations of all the beacons geo-located within the FAA's Central Region. (View larger image.)