Slightly Off-topic

I drove past a substantial Phoenix PD facility at Central and Union Hills yesterday, and noticed a radar antenna rotating. Does anyone know what its function might be [other than tracking aircraft, duh . . .]?

I don't remember ever seeing it, wondering if it's fairly new or I've just missed it. I'll have to take a look. My guess would be weather. Radar is normally used for tracking aircraft and weather, and I can't imagine it would be tracking aircraft from that location.

It shows up in Google Street View...

And on Google Earth it looks to be about 1000' North and 200' East of Central and Union Hills.

OK, I'm going to change my mind, I do think it's aircraft radar. Most weather radar have domes over them, most aircraft radar don't (or at least that's what I've been told). The land it's on is all City of Phoenix property. Like mentioned earlier, there's Phoenix PD in there, along with Street Maintenance, Sanitation, and Equipment Management. Deer Valley Airport, also owned by Phoenix, is only about 2 miles away. So my guess is aircraft radar.

FWIW

No argument whatsoever with your conclusion. I'll just add the observation that this antenna - the photos above are the antenna I wrote about - is on a much shorter [lower?] tower/mount than most ATC antennas I've casually observed over the years. I'm going to guess, again just from street observation from outside the fence, that it's around 30 feet high. . .

MFD4305 said:

No argument whatsoever with your conclusion. I'll just add the observation that this antenna - the photos above are the antenna I wrote about - is on a much shorter [lower?] tower/mount than most ATC antennas I've casually observed over the years. I'm going to guess, again just from street observation from outside the fence, that it's around 30 feet high. . .

Click to expand...

Best guess....
It's either a radar repeater backup or separate radar for bird detection for Sky Harbor Intn'l, who has bird flock problems.