Tonite's the Night!

Track Santa! And this year you can use Google Earth (be SURE you don't miss the cool videos embedded in/on the map at the NORAD site)… ain’t technology grand? Santa appears to be making his rounds successfully...it looks like he's already hit New Zealand, Australia and most of the Far East. At the time I put up this post he was delivering goodies to the good kids in Kirov, Russia. (I wonder what Tsar Vlad is getting this year? Stuffed ballot boxes, one would presume... but that sort of thinking doesn't belong in a "Happy Post," now, does it?)

From my December 2005 post on this subject…edited to add a lil more detail:

Back when I was in the radar biz we used to do this sort of thing locally for the families of the guys at the radar sites where I was stationed. Back in the day every USAF long-range aircraft control and warning (AC&W) radar site had a video mapping device that fed programmed exercise video to Operations; the normal output from the video mapper was "canned" and consisted of video blips simulating actual aircraft. The video mapper was used to train ground-control intercept controllers and technicians during the course of “normal” business, but we put that video mapper to a much different use at Christmas. On Christmas Eve we'd load up a special video overlay and route it to the intercept control scopes in Operations. While "exercise" video consisted of fake bogeys (simple blips) and tracks to train intercept controllers and technicians, the special Santa video showed a sleigh and reindeer on the scopes, and of course the sleigh moved…traversing our radar coverage area. Not nearly real, but real enough for the kids that saw it! (And for the adults, too…those willing to “suspend disbelief,” as it were.)

The kids always got a big thrill out of the radar displays. Doing the Santa video was one of the most fun things I ever did while I was a radar guy.

Ah…memories. We had us some fun at Christmas, we did!

(Photo: NORAD)

Update 12/24/2007 1530 hrs: Still not tracking Santa, are ya? Here's one of those cool lil vids you're missing. There's a new one about every hour or so. It's all about the kids... and the vids are pretty well done, IM (Not So) HO.