Can you judge the diameter of this?

I'm trying to get the scale right for my flight sim and I'm having a bit of trouble estimating the diameter of these fuel tanks.

Well, one of the coal wagons on the right measures about 16'6" (or 5.0292m) if that helps.

As you can see....at a couple hundred feet altitude, the tanks are a tad small.

Ok let's say they're about 16 feet long. I can fit about 7 of them across a tank (increased the size a bit to correct for the distance of the coal car behind the tanks). It comes out to about 112 feet.

Assuming one of those windows on those buildings is four feet across, I'd say that the fuel tank is between 12 and 14 windows across. That would make it about 45 feet in diameter.

On the other hand, a single lane on a highway might have a maximum width of 12 feet. Those tanks look to be about five lanes wide. That would put them around 60 feet wide if measured that way.

I'd say that given those two estimations, 50 feet would be a good diameter for the tanks.

taking the nearest tank and wagon, I can fit 5 and a tiny bit across the diameter. That makes it around 80 feet.

If its a picture of Ploesti in Roumania, I found these links that may help.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/4762/8af/8th-af2.htm

http://www.450thbg.com/real/targets/2/index.shtmlmap

Cheers

Garion

I'm currently trying to find the location on google earth, for some reason searching for Ploiesti shows nothing, although it is clearly labelled just north of Bucharest.

It's not got very detailed satellite images so it's difficult to match the location.

Judging from the bombing that place took, it probably doesn't exist anymore. :P

As for scale: my guess from just looking at the pic would be about 50-60 feet diameter.

Garion those are some sweet links. That will keep me busy modeling for a few days.

Yer welcome, glad to see my current fixation with WW2 history is of use to other peeps. Its gonna amaze my wife (who does not understand me) :)

Geek Giggle, chuckle..snort!

Cheers

Garion