Kaikoura 1978: Visualisation · Signals from the Periphery

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THE WINDOW

Subject

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Value

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State

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KAIKOURA 1978
two December nights · two channels · one film
the whole working file declassified in 2010
the big light had no ground radar at all
the candela is an assumed distance, squared
the official Venus stood 9.5° below the sea
refly the night · price every channel

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Evidence

fact ⇄ what kind of claim · live

Both nights' chronology, every radio call, every quote

the declassified file and the taped record, verbatim, conflicts included

REPORTED

Routes, ranges, horizons: who could geometrically see what

closed form on published coordinates; the radial is the record's own 033 M

EXACT

Venus and Jupiter on both nights; no moon on the 31st

Standish elements + GMST, audited against JPL Horizons in the tune script

EXACT

The refraction budget: 1/tan(el), a thousandfold short for Venus

closed form + traced fan; the inversion layer itself is a dial

EXACT

217,000 cd at 18 km; ~12,000 cd at 6 km: the same film

Maccabee's own equation reproduced; his published pair matched to 2%

EXACT

Every radar event on every set, and the January theodolite test

as filed; the horizon and MTI arithmetic around them is exact

REPORTED

The sea, the coast, the cloud, the aircraft, the fleet cluster

staging around the file's own positions; amber markers are testimony

MODELLED

What the night became to the people on the plane

the one card this bench prices nothing of

READING

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The window

The clock02:18 NZDT

2346 wheels-up at Wellington to 0315 at Blenheim, the record's own fixes. The amber markers appear at their reported clock calls.

Testimony markersthe reported light, at the record's own calls

The squid fleetstaged at the file's stated 120 nm

Labels

The ray bench

Inversion strength4.0 °C

The RNZAF invoked 'a marked inversion above about 10,000 feet'. Dial it from nothing to brutal and watch what it buys.

Inversion base10,000 ft

Aim-9.5°

Elevation of the highlighted ray. Venus's true direction at 02:25 was 9.5 degrees down.

The photometry

Assumed distance R18 km

Maccabee's radar window was 18-35 km; Ireland's 2000 reading is 6 km. The candela follows R squared.

The radar

Target altitude0 ft

The orange ring is how far Wellington could see a target at this height. At 0 ft, Kaikoura is 56 km beyond it.

The night clock00:30

Readout · live

Clock

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Venus el / az

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Sea horizon

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Candela at R

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Venus gap

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Fixed-source drift

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What is exact vs modelled here

Exact: the geodesy and both radials, the sea and radar horizons, Venus and Jupiter for both nights (audited against JPL Horizons), the refraction budget, Maccabee's photometric equation and its reproduction, the turn dynamics, and the pacing drift. Reported: the whole chronology, every radio call and quote, every radar event, the official findings and their printed conflicts. Modelled: the sea, the coast silhouette, the cloud sheet, the aircraft model, the fleet cluster's exact position, and the atmosphere profile in the ray bench. Reading: the people card. There is no fitted constant anywhere on this bench.

The model, in full

Routes and ranges are closed-form on published coordinates; horizons use 7/6-Earth (optical) and 4/3-Earth (radar) radii. The sky is GMST plus a J2000 catalogue plus Standish mean elements for Venus and Jupiter, with a truncated-Meeus moon; the tune script audits all of it against JPL Horizons rows for both nights. The ray bench integrates y'' = 10⁻⁶ dM/dz through a dialled profile. The photometry is I = E·A·R²/(τ·A_L·T_atm) with Maccabee's published inputs. Every anchor is checked in scripts/kaikoura-tune.mjs.

Where this instrument takes liberties

The 3D night is staged: real sky, real route, invented sea texture and coast ridge. The squid fleet stands at the file's verbal position ('120 miles east of Banks Peninsula'), not a logged fix, because the compulsory logs contained no fix: that absence is itself part of the case. The amber light markers are testimony drawn at the record's clock calls, not tracked objects. The inversion in the ray bench is a dial because the actual radiosonde numbers are not in the released file. The southbound leg's many small lights are represented by the record's words, not simulated.

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