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Danish Straits

April 14, 2017
Danish Straits Important
captionAre the three sea channels between Denmark and Sweden connecting the Baltic Sea to the North Sea through the Kattegat and Skagerrak. The three chief sea passages are:
  • Øresund (Oresund);
  • Storebælt (Great Belt); and,
  • Lillebælt (Little Belt).

Base Map Source: DEMIS

Source: NASA

Øresund (Oresund)

Oresund is the eastern-most of the Danish Straits, separating the Danish island of Zealand (Sjaelland in Danish) from the Swedish mainland.

Oresund. The dashed lines at the top and bottom indicated the northern and southern limists of the Oresund. Base map source: DEMIS At its narrowest, between Helsingor'/Elsinor (Demark) and Helsingborg (Sweden), the Oresund is approximately 2.5 miles (4 kilometres). A ferry connects the two sides, but the construction of a tunnel is under consideration.

Oresund Link

In 1991, the governments of Denmark and Sweden agreed to build a bridge to connect the two countries across the Oresund Strait.

The 16-kilometre-long Oresund Link between Malmo, Sweden (right), and Copenhagen, Denmark (left), was completed and opened to traffic in 2000.

The Oresund Link has three main segments.

Oresund coast south of Kullaberg. @ C. Michael Hogan

  • caption On the Denmark side, the link begins with a 3510-metre (2.2-mile) underwater tunnel.
  • The tunnel emerges from the water onto a roadway on a 4055-metre (2.5-mile) artificial island, Peberholm, which appears as a bright white shape to the south of the natural island in the scene below.
  • The cable-supported Oresund Bridge stretches 7845 metres (4.9 miles) across the eastern part of the Strait toward Sweden, producing a thin white line across the image.

This image of the Oresund Link was acquired April 10, 2004. The large image is centered near 55.6 degrees North latitude, 12.7 degrees East longitude, and it covers an area of 50.8 by 25.9 kilometers. Deep water appears dark blue, shallow water appears bright blue, vegetation appears green, and developed or paved areas appear white. Several white specks in the waters of the Strait are boats or ships. . Source: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Storebælt (Great Belt)

Storebælt (Great Belt) is the middle and widest strait of the three main Danish Straits. It passes between between the main islands of Zealand (Sjælland) and Funen (Fyn). Being the widest, it is the main channel for vessels passing between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.

The Great Belt is sometimes viewed in two parts: a "northern zone" between Zealand and Funen (The Great Belt proper); and, a "southern zone" between the islands of Langeland and Lolland (a strait called Langelandsbaelt).

caption Base map source: DEMIS

South of the Great Belt is the Bay of Keil which lies off the north coast of Germany. The Baltic Sea to the east is reached through the Fehmarn Belt.

The Great Belt is crossed by the Great Belt Bridge (Great Belt Fixed Link) which connects a point just south of Korsor on the island of Zealand to Nyborg on the island of Funen

As shown in the images right and below, the mid point of the bridge is the island of Sprogø.

Source: Dr Kjaergaard/Wikimedia Commons

A suspension bridge (4.2 miles, 6.8 km "East Bridge") carries a road from Korsor to Sprogø, while two connected tunnels convey the rail link. The suspension bridge has the world's third longest main span: 5328 feet or 1624 m, under which the main shipping lanes pass.

A "box girder" bridge (4.2 miles, 6.6 km "West Bridge") connects Sprogø to south of Nyborg. This bridge has two separate spans, one for rail and one for road traffic. The Link openned in 1998.

Lillebælt (Little Belt)

Lillebælt (Little Belt) is the western most and narrowest of the straits. As such it is not generally used by larger vessels.

The strait is at its narrowest (just 800 metres) between the island of Funen (Fyn) and the mainland of Denmark (Jutland), where it crossed by two bridges:

  • the "Old Little Belt Bridge" (3865 feet, or 1.2 km) originally serving rail, road and pedestrians, but now carrying just a rail link; and,
  • the new "Little Belt Bridge" (1.1 mile, or 1.7 km), a suspension road bridge.

About three million barrels per day (bbl/d) flowed through this waterway in 2010, with most of this product moving westward. Russia has increasingly been shifting its crude oil exports to its Baltic ports, especially the relatively new port of Primorsk, which accounted for half of the exports through the Straits. An estimated 0.3 million bbl/d of crude oil, primarily from Norway, flowed eastward to Scandinavian markets.

About one-third of the westward exports through the Straits are for refined products, coming from Baltic Sea ports such as Tallinn (Muuga), Venstpils, and St. Petersburg.

Saundry, P., Administration, E., & Administration, N. (2013). Danish Straits. Retrieved from
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Source: www.eoearth.org
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Time of Remembrance

Joseph E. Helton

Monroe, GA

Date of Death:

Incident Location:

Baghdad, Iraq

Military Branch:

United States Air Force

6th Security Forces Squadron

Unit Base:

MacDill AFB, FL

1LT Joseph D. Helton Jr., 24, of Monroe GA, died September 8, 2009 serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was assigned to the 6th Security Forces Squadron, MacDill Air Force Base, FL. He died near Baghdad of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.

Helton was deployed from the 6th Security Forces Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. He was stationed there in 2007 after graduating from the Air Force Academy, reports said. If someone had a question, Joseph D. Helton was the man to go to for the answer. “He just looked like he knew the answers,” said his mother, Jiffy. He was comfortable cooking his signature treat, baklava, and cleaning, but he also had a “quiet, commanding presence,” she said. He admired his family’s service — his parents, grandparents and three uncles all had been in the armed forces — and doodled battleships and fighter jets as a child. The daydreaming was not in vain: He went to the Air Force Academy, graduating in 2007. He then was assigned to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. He didn’t want to leave his sisters behind, but his mother insisted he follow his dream.

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Dec 31

Solving Sneaky Audio Issues

Over the holidays, I’ve spent quite a bit of time tackling some very tricky audio issues in the rock lab. Issues that have been plaguing me for quite a while, but I didn’t have enough dedicated time to solve.

I have intentionally created an all-digital studio, and although I also have a turntable and LP’s because I love the sound of warm dynamics of analog, for the jams and recording that I do, the digital realm is infinitely more convenient…but it has it’s own set of challenges. 🙂

Challenge 1: Quiet Strat
Strat sounds awful via POD HD 500. My Red Strat (a Squier Stagemaster from the 90’s) is a Humbucker / Single / Single guitar, and has always sounded lovely and hollow like a typical Strat. But connected to the POD HD, it sounded weak and sad. I tried everything I could think of in the patch settings on the POD to get it to sound halfway decent, and it just never did. So I put it aside, and pulled out the Fretlight – it has fancy Shelby Designs pickups, so I figured it should sound fine. Nope. Same issue. I spent hours searching for pickups and such to find something decent…but just didn’t have the $$ to try it on a whim. So, I pulled out the blue Stagemaster (an Ibanez RG clone, Humbucker/Humbucker), on which I’d installed a Alumitone Deathbucker pickup. Sounded OK, but there were still issues. I put the whole thing aside for a couple days, and then came back and pulled the POD out and set it up out from under the desk. And lo and behold – the “Input Pad” switch was on. There was a similar switch on my old POD X3…and I had it on most of the time, but I hadn’t seen it on the HD500. They’d moved it to the top of the unit, I didn’t notice it since it was under the desk. I flipped it off of Pad and lo and behold everything sounded wonderful. Must be a stronger DB reduction than the X3 version was. Great! Except for this strange high-pitched ringing after every note.

Challenge 2: High-Pitched Ringing from POD HD 500
I have the POD connected to my MOTU 896mk3 via a S/PDIF digital cable. It saves me running more audio around, and bottom line the POD and the MOTU are both all-digital inside, so if I ran analog from the POD to the MOTU, it would be going Guitar (analog) -> POD (digital) -> Audio Cable (analog) -> MOTU Input (analog) -> MOTU mixer (digital). Saving a few A/D->D/A steps makes sense. Plus I get stereo with only one cable, and can record at very high sample rates if need be. However, there are some tricks to making S/PDIF sound right. Trick #1 is to make sure that the POD Output and the MOTU input are set to the same settings. Which I had done when originally setting it up. And if you don’t have it right, typically you hear nothing but horrible digital noise – so pretty obvious. In this case however, the settings on the MOTU side had changed (probably when I did a full reset on it a while back), and it was just slightly off – the MOTU side was at 44.1khz sample rate, and the POD at 48k. I flipped the MOTU to 48k, and voila – high-pitched ringing was gone. Looks like it was a subtle form of digital distortion. To figure this out, I listened to the guitar direct into the MOTU – no noise…I listened to the headphone output from the POD – no noise. So pretty much had to be the digital cable – checked both ends, and voila. Also, when the POD is not on (power unplugged), but the mixer is, I get whooshy digital noise coming into the cable. So I have to mute that input if the POD is unplugged.

One thing that kept eluding me here – since I run the Mac’s digital audio out into one of the ADAT ports on the MOTU via a TOSLINK cable, you have to use the Audio/MIDI Setup application on the Mac to make sure your sample rate from the Mac matches the MOTU as well, otherwise IT will have the strange distortion on it as well. Everything has to match! In my case, I set everything to 48k.

Challenge 3: DVI Audio Whine From Yamaha THR-10
I love the tones and feel of the Yamaha THR-10 – and it does have a USB output – but that output doesn’t play well with the MOTU mixer…unless I run some routing on the Mac side to take the USB audio and route it back into the mixer. Which I’ve done…and it just doesn’t sound right. So I’ve been running the headphone output of the THR into an analog input on the MOTU. When I run it with the power supply plugged into the THR, I hear the DVI Audio Whine from the various computer equipment through the headphone output. If I wasn’t having to amplify the output of the THR a bit (with the gain knob on the MOTU input channel) to get the levels to match, you’d probably never hear it, but with things turned up, it’s super-annoying. Bottom line, I need to run a balanced cable from the output of the THR into the MOTU to shield it from the RFI. However, the stereo headphone on the THR won’t support that. So I’ve ordered a unbalanced->balanced converter to try as a last resort. It will also be useful for connecting my turntable to the MOTU at some point, so it’s not a one-trick pony. 🙂

So there you go, three ‘simple’ problems that took me a dozen hours of hair pulling to sort through…I hope if you had any of these issues that this helped you!