On Tue, 27 Nov 2012 01:25:27 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote,
But the Daily Mail quoted the wrong expert. Wikipedia has a map dating back to 1875 that shows the (nonexistent) island. Later mapmakers have assumed that previous mapmakers knew what they were doing, so they copied each other enough times that the island's alleged existence became fairly common (mis-)knowledge.
Note that commercial maps nowadays are often salted with intentional errors, to help identify copyright violators. But Sandy Island goes back so far that it was probably an honest mistake. The Coral Sea was not, and is not, well explored.
Google, of course, is guilty of showing it. When you zoom in on the satellite view, it's a black object surrounded by deep water. It is clearly not a satellite image, so it's not clear why they bothered to draw it in over the real image. It implies that they simply didn't trust the camera and insisted on putting the island there. Were this just on the map view, it would be more understandable. Note that the somewhat nearby Chesterfield Islands, west of Sandy, are real, and are much more visible on the satellite view than on the map. I think that's because the island group is mostly a large underwater reef, visible on satellite, with only a few small areas above the water line; only those show on the map view.
Bing Maps has a very poor aerial/satellite view of the Pacific; it looks like a nighttime shot. So you can't see anything there. Its map view is odd, though. At the 250 mile (bar in the lower left corner) resolution, there's a dot for Sandy. At the 100 mile resolution, Sandy's alleged shape is visible. At any closer zoom, it's gone. And Bing doesn't find it by name, though it gets the (real) Chesterfields.
I do enjoy that the un-discovery was made over a decade ago by a DXpedition team merely trying to get Chesterfield Islands added to the DXCC list. This is obscure outside of the ham radio community. DX Century Club is one of the biggest Radiosport awards programs, running since 1946. (It's run by the American Radio Relay League, arrl.org. )The basic DXCC certificate is awarded for contacting (with proof, usually QSL cards) at least 100 "countries" (DXCC Entitites). The Honor Roll shows the participants with the highest lifetime totals. There are 340 Entitites now on the list, though the top guy has 398, counting now-deleted ones (usually due to a change in political status).
The DXCC rules allow an Entity to be created out of islands when "A single island is separated from its Parent (and any other islands that make up the DXCC Entity Parent island group) by 350 kilometers or more, as measured from the island containing the capital city." Chesterfield is more than 350 km from the rest of New Caledonia. But Sandy was allegedly in between the two. So it would have broken up the >350 km distance into two smaller distances, thus disqualifying Chesterield from being an Entity. By disproving Sandy's existence, Chesterield could be added to the DXCC list. And it is now on the list (FK8/C).
Since nobody lives on Chesterfield, the only way anyone could make a contact with another ham there would be if somebody visited the place. That's what a DXpedition does. It visits "rare ones" with radios (and generators, antennas, etc.) and puts them on the air for a few days. Thousands of DXers around the world then try desperately to make contact with you, which is kind of a nice ego trip. Some will contribute to fund the DXpedition. (You then get to do the snorkeling for free.)
This is definitely "off the grid" telecom.
-- Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting
It may be off the telecom grid, but I never met a telco guy who didn't love esoterica, so I'm sending it out. ;-)
Who knows, there might even be a submarine cable buried there ...
Bill Horne Moderator