Los Angeles – Page 10

Loop Feedback Loop at CLUI

As a fan of both urban infrastructure and secret knowledge, I cannot recommend the current “Loop Feedback Loop” exhibit at the Center for Land Use Interpretation highly enough. The Los Angeles street and freeway network is such a complex system that it’s unmanageable without automated assistance and intervention which in turn feedback into the system by controlling traffic signals, etc. All the data from the surveillance cameras, embedded induction loops, and monitoring devices are transmitted to the LA Department of Transportation’s Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control (ATSAC) System – an underground “traffic war room” (all data centers need to have a Dr. Strangelove-sized “war room” where the central brain for the system is located.

The CLUI exhibit details all this plus you get to view real-time data and laugh at the one photo of the ATSAC center which shows one of the screens tuned to The People’s Court. And you’re also right next to the best specialized bookstore in Los Angeles.

Ghosts of punkers past

A lone SST sign on 4th St. in downtown Long Beach. I think this was the site of one of the SST retail stores, now it’s a ghost awaiting the inevitable Starbucks.

Twenty years ago I bought basically everything this label released.

Restaurant menu archive

L.A. Observed points to the LA Central Library’s collection of restaurant menus that go back to the 1870s.

Fillmore VORTAC toasted

You won’t notice this as an airline passenger, but as a pilot this is a huge deal.

FIM is the primary NAVAID for jet traffic from Northern California and the Pacific Northwest into Southern California. Literally, every arrival into Burbank, Van Nuys, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Long Beach, John Wayne/ Orange County, Los Alamitos, Camp Pendleton, Palomar and San Diego may navigate via FIM.

At this time there are no RNAV STARs planned or in existence which can substitute for these procedures. The permanent loss of the FIM would require every procedure now utilizing FIM to be redesigned and flight checked. Because of terrain/coverage and location issues, it is unlikely that other VORTACÂ’s will be able to adequately substitute for FIM. Radar and radio coverage is good in the area of FIM. At the current time ATC is vectoring aircraft along the route of flight to compensate for the loss of FIM.

Normally the VORTACs look like a little building with a cone antenna on top. I can’t imagine how hot the fire was when it swept through there.

Fire

The smoke from the various Los Angeles fires blew over Long Beach all day today making it feel like a volcano was going off. Enough ash had rained down to collect on parked cars, pile up on my staircase, and turn the sky yellow. Perversely, the Halloween Dog Parade was going on in Belmont Shore making the whole day seem like a Fellini movie.