Fate of DCA "live cams" page on YT ??
 

Perhaps other DC-area locals and/or AVgeeks over the past years have seen the multiple livestream angles broadcast 24/7 on YouTube along with the DCA Tower ATC feed until everything went dark in the past month of so? Am hopeful since the YT page still exists (just with no content) that the page owner is merely taking a pause or upgrading equipment. As the cameras were setup completely independent of MWAA/DCA, and at a significant distance from the airport (my guess as to the cams' physical location would be Georgetown or even farther west on the DC-side of river), the person behind the effort must have spent a nice amount on top-quality cameras and zoom-lenses. I really miss the cams, and hope for their speedy return! Maybe just maybe the "operator" might be a visitor to this site and/or other users may have more info?. So far as I know, there is no way to contact the page owner, nor did the person behind the effort ever ask for donations. I'll paste the url to the no-content former YT page, but if such a url is against forum rules apologies. https://www.youtube.com/c/DCAAirportWebcam/videos

Who knows. There are many things that could have happened. The person who owned this moved.

Moving is certainly a possibility, but in the past when certain cams on the page were down for upgrades or maintenance, the operator always noted what was going on. Difficult to imagine someone who spent so much money and effort not writing even a one line note saying something like: "Viewers, it was fun, but I'm moving on to other things" or whatever the case maybe.

Aside from perhaps the famous SXM cam, these DCA cams were the very best, and I was a frequent viewer, even if just having them on in the background while doing something else. Miss them.

I found one screen capture I kept from 2019 of a landing Delta flight I was on executing a going around due to spacing/traffic on the runway. (Usually the cams would store 8 hours of live video before "overwriting," thus in the go-around example I was able to come home, back the feed up, and find my flight.)

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...36adf9f123.jpg

https://www.flyreagan.com/photos/ext...tional-airport

this image appears from the opposite direction that likely puts this in a crystal city condo or office building to the right of the tower

Disagree; based on how the tower lines up along the rest of the terminal, this is definitely taken from DC. That's Memorial Bridge in the foreground so can't be Crystal City. And no way to get that angle of the bridge down to DCA from Rosslyn. But the real markers are the red and white smokestacks on the bottom left and right corners - they are definitely from G'Town - there are no smokestacks in Arlington like that. The red one is next to the 4 Seasons and the white one is from Georgetown Park mall along the C&O (made famous in the movies No Way Out and True Lies in which Schwarzenegger destroys a bathroom and steals a horse through the mall). So that angle puts it at least in upper G'Town. But it has to be zoomed in a ton to get the stacks in the corners like that so I am thinking its even higher up, maybe around the Cathedral. Someone has a pretty nice camera....!

ETA: the analysis above is based on using google earth and the angle/position of the tower to the terminal to then draw a line backwards to where one could have the view of the two smokestacks. Sure, could be from a condo building/rooftop closer to GTown than from the Cathedral area but not so close as those always-super-fun-at-Halloween stairs. What ever happened to Regan, anyway? :)

It seems to be taken in DC from closer to DCA than it would be if taken from the National Cathedral area. I think it could be pulled off from closer to The Exorcist stairs, but don’t push me down if wrong on that. ;)

I think it’s a much shorter walk to the photo location from the Exorcist stairs than from National Cathedral.

Clue: I suggest checking out the view from the south tower of a building in which Clinton had some undergrad classes. Then you can narrow down on the vantage point for taking that photo — the vantage point being far closer to the Exorcist stairs than to National Cathedral. —- Your friendly neighborhood Halloween observer who made many a march between NCS and the stairs on Halloween night. ;)

I wasn't aware of this. Thanks for posting. Total Avgeek here as well and this would pair nicely with the audio on LiveATC. Looks like it's still offline. :mad:

Normally your posts are spot on but I have to disagree with you on this one. I don't think that's Memorial Bridge in the foreground. And how could the river be behind the airport if this is taken from the east bank? If it was taken from the east side, the river would be in the foreground. You can also see the Gaylord Hotel at National Harbor in the extreme right across the river in Maryland. So to me, this is clearly taken from the Virginia side. The AC doing the go-around is attempting to land from the south on RWY 1 (and it's a good thing he did as there is clearly a plane on the runway just starting its departure roll!)

tl;dr; - cam is from somewhere in Georgetown.

Here's the screen capture with annotations:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a79500aea9.jpg

Using the NRL Building and the Gaylord National Harbor as the boundaries, here's a sightlines view:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b958940181.jpg

Going back to the original screen capture image, using the roofline of DCA Terminal 2 and the buildings at Marbury Point, here's one more sightline:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a8fdf04db3.jpg

It is somewhere high enough in Georgetown that the zoom can pick up the western half of Arlington Bridge but not too high to then bring Roosevelt Bridge into view - and still bracketed by the two smokestacks relatively close by.

David

FWIW, here are the two smokestacks in Georgetown:


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...89a9d98ff3.jpg

And here's the same two smokestacks with map labels on:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c648b82d58.jpg

David

Thanks for the kind words. :)

Arlington Memorial Bridge is distinctive with those arches. When you say "river behind the airport" I think you really mean is in the foreground - the water behind the bridge. That is the mudflat/shallows portion of the Potomac on the western side of Roosevelt Island - between the Pentagon/GW Parkway and the island while the main channel of the Potomac on the eastern side between the island and G'Town is not visible.

Also point out that, from where the webcam is, it would be better to say that the webcam is located on the North Bank of the Potomac - see the images above.

David

Yep I see that now. Should have never questioned you. ;) I was thinking it must be shot from Virginia not over Virginia, which it clearly was. I forgot to account for the bend in the river which, of course, places GT both north and WEST of DCA.

Agree and thanks for the detailed analysis. I was thinking Rosslyn but your sight lines clearly show differently.

No, me too to start. I was thinking that there must be a bridge just north of DCA that had the sight line. Searching on Google Maps and Earth led me to the empty set.

Only widening the search and then really reading what Section 107 had written finally clicked - documenting the analysis took a bit more of an evening than I want to admit...

Anyway, only correction I'd note is that the hotel next to the red smokestack is the RC Georgetown. And, man, someone has a nice webcam to take those shots.

David