Russia Antenna, Seasons, Car - Basics

Sakhalin is one of the most distinct regions of Russia, due to it’s mountains, coastline, and cabbage.

All of those may appear individually, but when you have all 3 at the same time, it makes for easy region identification.

• All of Sakhalin has a blurred long antenna, which separates it from regions such as Kamchatka or Primorsky Krai.

• The more north you go in the oblast, the sandier it can appear. The area near Okha is a good example of that.

• Almost every tree is a siberian larch.

• The best way to tell apart these two is the landscape.

• Sakha haze coverage west of Yakutsk will almost always be flat. Magadan on the other hand will almost always be mountainous

• Both areas may feature white car gen 4, but it’s harder to see in Magadan on some occasions.

• Both areas have siberian larches all over.

Kamchatka is characterized by its unique snow capped mountains and otherworldly feel.

Its volcanic soil spreads all throughout the region, so even if you don’t have mountains in sight, the soil color can give it away.

Kamchatka will always have a silver car with a long antenna, which means it’s B-type. It being B-type will separate it from other eastern areas that have a white car instead, because white car has A-type.

Altai Republic has a black car long antenna driving north through the Altai Mountains, often with foggy or rainy coverage.

While it has a generic antenna, the landscape is sufficient for the 400+ kilometer stretch of coverage.

The southernmost extent of the coverage will be much dryer looking, often resembling Tuva.

Super flat landscape, birch clusters

This landscape is common in the oblasts surrounding Omsk and further east.

This landscape + no car gen 4 is mostly going to be Omsk

Buryatia is characterized by its vast mountainous landscapes, with often no trees or sparse trees.

• Most of it is gen 4 with no car.

• The city of Ulan-Ude has red car.

• In the eastern parts of Buryatia, you’ll often find yourself on a relatively flat surface with either no mountains or huge mountains in the distance.

• Siberian larches will often fully surround you.

• Tunkinskiy National Park located in the far western part of Buryatia is unique because it has one long horizontal road running through the park, and you’ll often have mountains to your north and south.

• Elsewhere in Buryatia will typically have roads that are unpaved and/or will be curvy.

Much of Murmansk closely resembles far north nordic countries. The road seen in is very rocky, with a rolling landscape but no mountains. Barely any trees as well.

• All of gen 4 Murmansk was covered in August and September, so nearly every tree should resemble autumn in some way.

• Black car gen 4 can rarely be seen, but for the most part it should be gen 4 no car.

Sochi, otherwise coastal Krasnodar Krai, is the warmest region of Russia.

• It has lush vegetation, and commonly tropical plants as seen in the image above.

• It’s the only region of Russia to commonly feature tropical plants

• It’s often quite hilly, and sometimes mountainous.

Gen 3 Autumn coverage, long black antenna

Often has these trees sparsely placed along the road with white marks on them.

The Kaliningrad Google car is known for having a bigger brake light than usual.

Note that some white/silver car coverage may have this same brakelight, but they aren’t black car unlike Kaliningrad.

When the front centre of the google car is visibly red

Significantly more useful than the invisible google car because it’s in way less areas and more importantly is in areas that look relatively distinct from each other.

• Note that 100% of the gen 4 in Kemerovo, Yamalo-Nenets, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk are red car.
• There are significant portions of Tomsk, Khanty-Mansi, Penza and Tatarstan with red car.
• The red car coverage in Buryatia is exclusively located near Ulan-Ude.

When the front of the car is visibly black with no antenna at the back of the car.

• Rarely found in Murmansk and Vladikavkaz
• Black car winter with mountains south should be Vladikavkaz. If mountains are southwest then it should be Nalchik.
• Black car can be very hard to see on certain road textures (commonly on the M11).

When the front of the car is visibly white with no antenna

• White car can be extremely hard to see at times (especially in Samara Oblast) but is very useful if you can see it.

• White car in the Sakha Republic starts in Berkakit (a tiny bit of non-white car can be sporadically found above it).

• White car in Sakha + Magadan is generally hard to see but a lot of it is either unique landscape with Siberian Larches and/or has extremely foggy coverage.

• Most of white car in western Russia is May coverage.

Appearing in many clusters across Russia, this is the best antenna to learn

• The Nizhny cluster is characterized by its sandy roadsides.

• The Elista cluster is the driest b-type region, and usually looks like a flat desert. No where else in b-type looks like this.

• The Yekaterinburg cluster can often feature an Omsk looking landscape. If not that, then it features the most forested roads in b-type.

• The Far east cluster can feature an Omsk looking landscape, but there’s mainly tree rows instead of tree clusters. You may also see more asian looking vehicles there.

p.s. You can learn the different kinds of smudges that appear in each coverage cluster via Illusion’s smudge document, but for now here are the easiest regions to know.

A Type has the uppermost ridge located on the right side of the antenna

These types apply to the 2016 and 2017 cars as well, I talked about this in that section but as a recap for the most part A is located east or south, C is west of Omsk and B/Very B is everywhere west of Irkutsk.

Very B is found in the most locations but A type is the most common due to eastern 2016/2017 being more common than western

Very B Type differs from regular b type by the shape of the uppermost ridge which is more rectangular in the very b version

These types apply to the 2016 and 2017 cars as well, I talked about this in that section but as a recap for the most part A is located east or south, C is west of Omsk and B/Very B is everywhere west of Irkutsk.

Very B is found in the most locations but A type is the most common due to eastern 2016/2017 being more common than western

For the most part the tilted short antenna follows a diagonal line between Karelia and Volgograd with some random tilted elsewhere in the south (mainly Stavropol) and some in downtown Ufa.

• Blurred is mainly Volgograd and Leningrad/Karelia. With some downtown Ufa and Krasnodar
  99% of the tilted antenna north west of Moscow is May coverage with the exception of Leningrad.

• Short antenna Leningrad is usually tilted with very little straight short antenna (which is A type)

Tilted antenna looks pretty similar to regular A type antenna. However there is a discernible tilted on the antenna (always tilted slightly to the left)

Unblurred is significantly more common than blurred so being able to identify the difference is useful

The 2018 tilted coverage is always blurred and the 2019 coverage is always unblurred.

Tilted antenna looks pretty similar to regular A type antenna. However there is a discernible tilted on the antenna (always tilted slightly to the left)

Unblurred is significantly more common than blurred so being able to identify the difference is useful

The 2018 tilted coverage is always blurred and the 2019 coverage is always unblurred.

This antenna is pretty unique and pretty identifiable, it appears quite blurry compared to the regular short antenna.

This might not be that important to note but apparently (I haven’t really tested this much) but on max zoom the image quality of blurred antenna is more pixelated than unblurred.

So for the rare case when you can't see the antenna this can be pretty useful.