"Coded" names to early RAF Avionic Systems

[TheChitterneFlyer]

Prior to my career-change to RAF Aircrew (1970's) I was an L Fitt AR (Air Radar Fitter) Tradesman and that there were many "Coded" names to the multitude of Airborne Systems at that time. I recall "Green Satin" which was a Doppler Radar Nav System that measured drift and groundspeed. "Blue Shadow" provided a Radar picture of the scanned area. "Red Steer" was the rearward warning Radar for the Vulcan and the Victor.

I recall a Radar Altimeter system that was fitted to the Comet II (51 Sqn); which was an "O Type" display... I cannot now remember the "coded" name for that particular system.

Navigation & Bombing System (NBS) was the installed system for the Vulcan and Victor.

What other "coded" names were there for the many "Cold War" systems installed into RAF aircraft?

Lost memories!

TCF

[Lima Juliet]

BLUE CIRCLE! :ok:

http://www.radarpages.co.uk/oral/scanlan/cmr/images/scanlanfig1.jpg

[ian16th]

Wiki is your friend!

See: List of Rainbow Codes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rainbow_Codes)

NBS was also in the Valiant, and a few Hastings at Lindholme :ok:

By the way, what is/was an L Fitt AR?

I was simply an Air Radar Fitter (Bomber) when I was demobbed in 65.

[Cpt_Pugwash]

TCF,

Although I trained as LFittNI (MCCTTS, 30 MU, a long time ago), I did work on elements of the Blue Silk and Green Satin. I also recall the name Green Hornet, but it does not appear in Ians Wiki link.
Lost memories indeed...

[RAFEngO74to09]

The search and mapping radar in the Buccaneer was BLUE PARROT. IIRC the entire radar package could be swapped out in 2 hours. This was often the quickest way to fix an obscure snag if the aircraft was required urgently and a spare radar pack was available.

[david parry]

Buccaneer also had Blue Jacket and Violet Picture. As well as the Blue Parrot radar as stated above. Pinkys could change one in under an hour:ok: when an early chop was on the cards !!

[PPRuNeUser0139]

The Shack had Orange Harvest but I'm not sure that it qualified as an Avionic System! Being polite, you could say it was of limited utility.

[tucumseh]

In general terms, "Blue" indicated a primary radar or doppler (like Blue Orchid). Many remain in service. Blue Kestrel radar, for example, in Merlin. But, a Weather radar simply uses the manufacturer's designator e.g. EW190/290 in C130s, Jetstreams, Dominies, Nimrods etc. There are exceptions - Sea Spray radar (RN Lynx) never got a "Blue" designator, mainly because the company wanted to call it Blue Tit and MoD baulked.


You mention Blue Parrot in Buccs. As the Phantom radar was a US system, it used the US designator - AWG10/11/12. This applies to all US sourced kit which explains why there seems to be so few with such names.


In other words, it was a bit of an ad hoc system.


The "proper" means of identification is the Airborne Radio Installation number. Blue Parrot was ARI 5930. This number was carefully determined. If it began with a 5, it was generally sourced from an RRE/RSRE specification and indicated MoD owned much of the Intellectual Property Rights. That is, if it was sold to other customers by the manufacturer, we got Commercial Exploitation rates, depending on how much of the design we owned. In some cases, this was very significant income. It also explained why MoD would have a designated project manager for an equipment that the UK didn't actually use. For example, RN Sea Kings had ARI 5991 Sea Searcher radar, but the project manager also managed the Super Searcher and Super MAREC series, which were based on our UK design but had been upgraded by the Design Authority at their expense. It was the PM's job to determine what percentage of the design we still owned, to agree the CER. (Not sure MoD even know they have to do this now. This expertise and experience was ditched long ago, so we (UK-PLC) are probably dipping out.


The 4-digit "5-series" ran out in the mid-80s and the 5-digit commenced. For example, Blue Kestrel (above) is ARI 50001 (The ARI number was applied for by the RN in October 1985, which shows how far ahead of the airframe the avionics projects were!!).


If the ARI number commenced with a 2 for example, this meant the IPR rested mainly with the Design Authority. This aspect was important to procurers, because there was no faffing around with nugatory competition - you knew there could only be one supplier for most activities and lead times were relatively fixed.


This system fell into disuse in the early 90s following an AMSO edict that the Avionics List would no longer be maintained. The immediate effect, to both procurer and user, was a huge increase in "production lead time" as they insisted on competing every singe requirement. Many projects were simply frozen for years because a competition could not be run, as only one company could answer the ITT properly.

[TheChitterneFlyer]

By the way, what is/was an L Fitt AR?



In RAF-speak... Electronic Fitter (Air Radar).

Blue Silk was the one that I couldn't remember. It did the same job as Green Satin and I often wondered why it carried a different designator. That being said, they were both a "bitch" to remove/fit from the under-floor area of the Comet; especially the TR Unit, a hulking great twin-dustbin type of arrangement that must have weighed-in at around 100+ Lbs.

TCF

[L J R]

Why H2S for a Lancaster Radar - I thought H2S was the chemical symbol for Sulfuric Acid...?


Why 'GEE'
Why 'Oboe'


Was Loran Long Range Air Navigation..?

[Red Line Entry]

H2S is hydrogen sulphide, which has a distinctly unpleasant smell. The story I heard is that early on in the design, a couple of the boffins were explaining the system to an RAF bod who didn't like some aspect of it.

"That stinks!" he declared

And so the system became known as H2S.

[dakkg651]

LJR.

H2S was not just fitted to Lancasters. It was carried by a number of other aircraft such as the largely unsung Halifax.

The origin of the designation is obscure. Some say it stood for 'Height to Ground' or Height to Slope'. Others say 'Home Sweet Home'.

Whatever, in wartime, code names for new bits of kit such as Oboe or Gee needed to be deliberately vague or misleading for obvious reasons.

LORAN does indeed stand for Long Range Navigation. It is still extant in the form of LORAN C coverage in some parts of the globe. It is a post war development of the original wartime GEE and GEE H.

[henry crun]

Oboe was so called because the tone heard by the receiving aircraft was similar to the musical instrument.

The lines on a Gee chart resembled a grid, so the first letter of that word was taken to name Gee.

[VIProds]

I joined up as an Air Radar Mechanic & was trained on H2SMK4A (Navigation & Bombing System) as there were still a few Lincolns flying about. As they were scrapped, I then went on to service Loran, GEE II & GEE-H on Canberras.

After a year long Fitters Course at Yatesbury, I was responsible for GEE III, Rad Alt, Orange Putter (Valiants), Red Steer (Victors), Green Satin, Blue Silk, IFF & SIF & TACAN (AtoA).

There is a very interesting document called "United Kingdom Aerospace & Weapons Projects. The Colour (or Rainbow) Codename".

Just Google "rainbow Codes" & go into the Skomer website, under colour codes.

[alisoncc]

Vulcan ECM systems had a whole range of different colour designations the names of which have long since evaporated from my memory cells. Orange Putter rings a bell somewhere but don't think it was ECM.

[VIProds]

V-Bomber ECM included Blue Diver, Green Palm, Indego Bracket, Red Light & Red Shrimp. Orange Putter was a tail warning Radar used on Canberra's & Valiant's.

[forget]

Some interesting stuff below. Some errors .... 'within the fuselage extension were four ECM jamming systems that required a transmitter and power unit each'. Not quite. The B2's three Red Shrimps were separate transmitter and power unit but the Blue Diver (X2) and Green Palm VHF Comm jammer were self contained. Then along came X Band.


Avro Vulcan - Google Books (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wdM5wJlVhpcC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=radar+%2B%22Indigo+Bracket%22&source=bl&ots=gZG7I-kJg1&sig=dHBFTvON7G4sV4YIN39RGYcSLmg&hl=en&ei=mJqVTdH3FsGFhQe3k837CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ)

Newark Air Museum.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b270/cumpas/594_cans.jpg

[BossEyed]

There are exceptions - Sea Spray radar (RN Lynx) never got a "Blue" designator, mainly because the company wanted to call it Blue Tit and MoD baulked.

tuc, normally I reckon I can rely on every word you type.

Sometimes - say, on April the First - I'm less convinced. :hmm:

[The Oberon]

Although the Rainbow Codes started off with some semblence of order it soon became mangled. The first one I remember was Blue Saga, not a radar but the original warning receiver on the V-Force.

Like most others I liked to think that the Hydrogen Sulphide reference to H2S was true. I eventually found out that it meant Height 2 Surface, quite innocent really.

Green Satin was a heavy thing to change but there were several differences to Blue Silk. They had different antennas and were packaged differently. Green Satin was the unpopular Tri-set and had a fixed Ground Speed range. Blue silk had a dome shaped transmitter and the other assemblies were half cheese shaped. This had originally been to allow Blue Silk to be fitted in a pod with the domed Tx. pointing forward, the cheeses hung on the side and the smaller antenna underneath. Blue Silk also had 2 different Ground Speed ranges selected by shorting links. The operating speed of the Aircraft dictated the speed setting of links fitted. Due to the antenna differences, Blue Silk was supposed to have a better "smooth sea" performance than "Green Grot".

[tucumseh]

Boss-Eyed

You eagle-eyed devil you. :ok:

[ACW599]

>LORAN does indeed stand for Long Range Navigation. It is still extant in the form of LORAN C coverage in some parts of the globe. It is a post war development of the original wartime GEE and GEE H.<

And a cousin of Consol, no doubt fondly remembered by Shackleton navigators. LORAN has a Russian relation, Chayka.

[oxenos]

Consol was originally set up by the Germans during the war. They called it Sonne (sun), because the radiated pattern rotated clockwise. Once the British realised what it was, there were plans to destroy the transmitting stations, until Coastal Command got to hear of it. They concluded that it would be of more use to us than to the Germans, so it was never attacked.
After the war a several more stations were built ( one at Bushmills, others in the US and USSR ) to add to the existing ones in Norway, Brittany and Spain, and it was given the name of Consol, from the spanish for "with the sun".
There was never a name for the aircraft equipment name for it, as there was none - reception was on the radio compass receiver.
Consol was still in the syllabus for the "radio aids" part of the ATPL exam when I sat it in 1979, in spite of the fact that the system had long since been shut down.

[ACW599]

>After the war a couple more stations were built ( one at Bushmills, the other I think in Canada ) to add to the existing ones in Norway, Brittany and Spain, and it was given the name of Consol, from the spanish for "with the sun".<

Bushmills (callsign MWN) was still on the air in about 1975, as was Stavanger (LEC). You could use an ordinary transistor portable to plot lines of position if you were a sad soul with nothing better to do...er, sorry, that should read "if you were interested in such things".

Wasn't one of the Vulcan's ECM devices called 'Red Steer' after the gentleman who devised it -- one Gerry Steer of RRE or thereabouts?

[howiehowie93]

Only slightly off track I hope.


When the RAF yearbook was worth reading in the late 70’s / early 80’s there was an interesting story called The Saga of Green Meat about a fictitious missile that was doing better in trials than the real ones. Very humorous at the time.:ok:


regards
Howie

[davejb]

Tuc has had a really hard day in fact....

But, a Weather radar simply uses the manufacturer's designator e.g. EW190/290 in C130s, Jetstreams, Dominies, Nimrods etc.

That'll be the R1 variant only then?

For MR1 we (of course) had the ASV21d, which was antiquated but I really liked operating it all the same, and MR2 had ARI 5980 (with the occasional slash), which was usually referred to as Searchwater. EW on MR1 was ARAR/ARAX, I don't know if there was a code equivalent but if there was it didn't permeate down very far, whilst the Loral on MR2 was called yellowgate - previous codenames would suggest this ought to have been two seperate words, ie Yellow Gate, but I can only recall seeing it as a single word.

We DID have a highly secret piece of equipment on 120 about 30 years back, known as 'Red Top Leader', I think it was some sort of disinformation device....

Dave

[tucumseh]

That'll be the R1 variant only then?


ARI 23116/7 (EW190 CCWR) aka MEL E190 and EkCo Weather Radar - fitted to Nimrod AEW (but not used for some obscure reason).

ARI 23175/2 (EW290) fitted to 3 x Nimrod MR1 (Which may or may not be the ones that became R1s. My experience dates to the period when the MoD denied the existence of the R1, something they still did as late as 1997, so it was always difficult to find out what they fitted - or nicked from other aircraft!).


Perhaps "fitted to" should be "intended for"!.


The AEW was to get the M2211B Tx/Rx. It is "interchangeable" with the M3051A fitted to C130, but as the former is lower power a different circuit breaker had to be fitted depending on which Tx/Rx you had available on the day. There was always a great shortage of M3051As (high power) so it was a toss up whether your aircraft had low or high power capability on a given day.

As the Low Power Tx/Rx was 4" shorter, different Anti-Vibration Mounts were required as well.

I was never convinced this CB and AVM change was effected properly, especially after AMSO's policy of June 1987 to destroy ALL consumable spares and many repairable ones as well. It was only the goodwill of British Caledonian that kept our a/c fitted. (There were two BCal repair lines at 4th line, one for the MoD. They allowed us to use their spares while we tried to mitigate AMSO's total incompetence). A typical tale from that time, when AMSO systematically ran down the airworthiness system.


Yes Davejb, I have hard days occasionally. Comes with age. Why, I remember the germanium to silicon transistor upgrade for this kit! And the senior RAF officer who, when visiting Emerson Radar in the States, spotted a colour CCWR and exclaimed "I want that". Of course, this constituted a contract and Emerson duly went ahead. That took some getting out of.

[Pontius Navigator]

The colour codes were originally allocated by the Ministry of Supply and included such devices as Blue Danube, hardly a radar. Later with I guess the demise of the MoS I believe manufacturers name some of the kit themselves.

The names certainly had some methology in them but I believe that the tail warning radar was designed by a Mr Steer. Red Steer 2 was based on the Lightning AI and well after the MoS relinquished its role.

[Fareastdriver]

Consol was still in the syllabus for the "radio aids" part of the ATPL exam when I sat it in 1979, in spite of the fact that the system had long since been shut down.

The Bushmills consol station was regarded as a military target by the IRA so the blew it up in the 70s. Stavanger went on for a long time. The Aerad A I P had the bearing correlation with the dots and dashes in the 80s, possibly in the 90s as I remember them before I left the North Sea in 1994. It had gone when I came back in 2000.

[engineer(retard)]

Oh no, I'll cover myself in wee and sit in a corner with the old aircrew. I worked on ARI5930/1, 5880/2, Orange Harvest, APS-20, AWG-11 and trained on E190. In my day you could see the electrons going through the valves

[forget]

In 1956, a requirement was issued for a 'tail warning radar' (TWR) for the trio of RAF V Bombers (Valiant, Victor and Vulcan) and it was realised by RAE (promoted by one of the EKCO liaison officers - Jerry Steer) that AI-20 was a well-engineered small radar, which, with limited modifications would be an ideal basis for the tail warning radar for the V bombers. This was selected and after some re-engineering became 'Red Steer' (ARI-5919).

Green Willow (http://www.ekco-electronics.co.uk/Green_Willow/Green_Willow.htm)

[davejb]

Hi Tucumseh,
your knowledge of ARI numbers etc is, as ever, most impressive - I have trouble answering the 'one lump or two' question these days <g>

I suspect the MR1's with E290 ended up as R1's, and AEW3's with E190 ended as baked bean cans or similar, but I bow in abject humility before your encyclopaedic memory. Your tale of BCal bailing out the RAF, and the general ineptitude of those who really ought to know better is, sadly, a common theme, isn't it?

Have a jolly Easter, I will definitely buy you a drink should we ever meet, you're one of the few sensible folk on this BBS.

(I'll buy one for Beagle too - he's entertaining).

Dave

[tucumseh]

davejb

But Beagle won't buy me one - I mention a certain officer too often. £20 in the kitty is better.

[davejb]

Then I'll buy you two to every one I buy Beagle old chap,
Dave

[ACW599]

>The Bushmills consol station was regarded as a military target by the IRA so the blew it up in the 70s.<

Ah. That explains a lot. And many thanks to 'forget' for the Red Steer reference.

>Stavanger went on for a long time.<

As indeed did Quimper (FRQ) from distant memory.

A nice avionics pub-quiz question is the name of the polar diagram of the TACAN antenna, which I've never encountered anywhere else before or since...

[exgroundcrew]

Red Steer was only fitted to the Victor and Vulcan, the Valiant used Orange Putter as it's tail warning radar. I worked on both systems and remember that Orange Putter was much smaller in diameter than Red Steer and I think a major redesign of the Valiant's rear end would have been needed to accomodate the bigger Red Steer

[redsetter]

>> In general terms, "Blue" indicated a primary radar or doppler

Not entirely true, at least not in the early years when the colour code was in official use. The whole point of the colour code was to obscure. Any systemic use of colours by function would have defeated that. A quick trawl through the Blues shows: Blue Jay (IR-guided missile); Blue Peacock (atomic land mine); Blue Rapier (unmanned bomber) etc. It does seem though that the prefix "Blue" was re-used in later years (long after the colour code had been officially abandoned) as a designator of radar systems.

[alisoncc]

Never saw Red Steer running without it's radome on the line - Vulcan B2's 230 OCU, but saw one in the Gin Palace and it was scary. I had heard tales of the dish taking off through the radome to become a UFO in it's own right previously, but having seen it's frenetic activity it didn't surprise me one bit.

[pmills575]

Red Steer II was a modified AI designed and built by Ecko. It had the odd "feature" that the displayed return was presented as that seen from the approaching fighter. A question that I got wrong on my trade test for corporal! Not that I'd come across the beast at that time.

Orange Harvest was really two systems, wide band and narrow band. The narrow band was a cobbled together version of Breton (some fraction) designed and used by that highly secret 51 sqdn. The wide band was made by Rank in Plymouth. The only place where they came together was in the "spark plug", this housed the aerials for both.

pm575

[The Oberon]

Alisoncc is indeed correct about the Red Steer Mk1 (ARI 5919) scanning pattern. The mechanism was a maze of cams,motors and balance weights arranged so that the dish would spiral out from zero datum to about 45 degrees azimuth and elevation. All this happened at about 300 rpm. At second line it was sometimes neccessary to run the kit without the radome. I did have one "let go" in the bay at AKR, result ? Lead balance washers and return springs all over the place and I volunteered to work on the Green Satin bench as a safer alternative.

There were also times when you could feel the vibration at the rear of the aircraft when it was fitted. It made me wonder what it would have felt like in a bullet stuck in the intake of a much smaller Lightning. As someone else says, the display being "back to front" could also be confusing.

Red Steer Mk11 (ARI5959) was a lot more civilised with a standard Raster scan and a manual sector scan facility.

[spocla]

The Sea Harrier FRS1 has the Blue Fox radar. It was pulse only and was affectionately referred to as the Cloth Cock, as in "its about as much use as a...."

[forget]

Here's something I posted on Red Steer in 'Did you fly the Vulcan'.

By the way, you'd never see an installed scanner without the Radome. The scanner and electronics were bolted into the Radome which was then bolted to the aircraft.

See http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/111797-did-you-fly-vulcan-merged-41.html#post2845349

-------------

Milt, You asked, “What was the function of the springs and what would fail when one broke?”

Difficult to describe, but here goes! Red Steer was the fighter intercept warning radar housed in the radome at the back end of the aircraft. The AEO was the operator and had the display/control in front of him. The ‘area of interest’ behind the aircraft was a cone of about 60 degrees, centred rearwards from the centre line. The Mk I simple parabolic scanner sent out a very narrow beam but it needed to (rapidly) investigate every angle of sky within the cone. To do this the scanner started a cycle which began with the beam pointing directly aft then began a spiral to describe larger angled cones out to the limit. Once there it reversed the process to come back to dead astern, then began another cycle. This was a mechanical scanner and all this was done through electric motors, hinges, cams – and springs. The problem was, a complete cycle took under 2 seconds!

You really had to see a scanner operating in the workshop to understand the stresses it was under! The spiral springs, I think, about 4 inches long by a half inch, tried to keep everything ‘tight’ against the cams, and mechanically connected. They didn’t stand a chance! When they broke the scanner simply flopped with gravity - and looked at the ground you’d just flown over.

[TheChitterneFlyer]

The narrow band was a cobbled together version of Breton (some fraction) designed and used by that highly secret 51 sqdn.


Ahhh, Breton... indeed, it was a 51 Sqn system designed for the Comet II. 51 (RAF Wyton) was my first posting straight out of Apprentice School (RAF Cosford) in 1972. I recall my first impression upon stepping aboard one of those Comets as "WTF"! Each time that the aircraft returned to base it would take several hours to fault-find the myriad of electronic components that constituted Breton. I could guarantee that the underbelly radome would have to be removed after every sortie to change aeriel motors that were producing "electronic noise" within the system.

During one particular detachment to Akrotiri we were changing Green Satin T/Rs and Tracker Units like they were going out of fashion and that I was sent aboard one of the sorties to fault-find with a couple of Test-Sets. I wasn't allowed to venture "up-front" until we were returning from wherever we had ventured. Hence, I sat next to one of the "Signallers" at the rear of the aircraft to be instructed on "how to breathe" by use of the Oxygen Economiser Units. The "square-window" Comet (XK655) had to operate at reduced differential pressure; hence the need to breathe oxygen. Green Satin had encountered the same problem and that I now had to hook-up the test equipment; hence, I had to access the under-floor area to plug-in the test cables. The oxygen hose wasn't long enough to reach the area where I needed to work; however, I was told that several minutes wouldn't be a problem without oxygen... I set to work. I recall that the data that I'd gathered was most useful and that I'd concluded that there was a high resistance reading from a wire within the Tracker Mounting Tray. I'd now forgotten the need for oxygen and the next thing that I knew was that I was being hauled-out of the underfloor area with an O2 wask on my face!

Green Satin did get fixed and, that night, I earned a free Kebab for my efforts... washed-down with copious ammounts of Kokinelli.

Little did I know that, in the years to come, that I would frequently return to Akrotiri to suffer the same evils of Kokinelli poisoning... happy days!

TCF

[Dengue_Dude]

With all these colours knocking around for Nav kit and so on, please don't confuse them with Purple Helmet.

He was a small Mediterranean navigator, a flight commander on 30 Sqn renowned for his sense of humour. In fact he might have been cloned with the Aryan Wg Cdr known for his too.

What a set of execs we had then. Sorry about the thread drift . . . no I'm not ;)

[denachtenmai]

TCF
Do the initials "R.Y" apply?
Regards, Den.

[Exnomad]

Memories of GEE as student Navigator in 1953. Around the UK it was accurate enough to fly down a position line to line up with the runway at Bishops Court, but I gather at longer ranges it was less acurate

[Pontius Navigator]

Not entirely true, at least not in the early years when the colour code was in official use. The whole point of the colour code was to obscure.

Quite:

Violet Picture and Violet Club

Red Beard and Red Steer

spot the nucs :)

[green granite]

To say nothing about Green Granite.

[Yellow Sun]

or Yellow Sun which should not be confused with Yellow Gate.

[ian16th]

I volunteered to work on the Green Satin bench as a safer alternative.

The Oberon,

When was that?

The GS bench at AKR was 'mine' for two years, Oct 62 to Oct 64.

[Dan Winterland]

The main element of the NBS fitted to the Victor and Vulcan B2s was the H2S Mk10. Sill in use in 1992, nearly 50 years since it's inception.

There were lots of WW2 kit with codenames. Monica and Oboe spring to mind. As does 'Parrot' - the code name for IFF, which was the very first appearance of the equipment we now know as the ATC transponder. Some of the terminology associated with this kit has stuck - which is why your transponder's response to an interrogation is known as a 'Squawk'.

[Igloowhite]

Orange Crop rings a bell - but that's all it does.

[dagama]

...... and there was Rebecca, fitted in the Varsity nav trainer, range-finding sysytem. Why was it called Rebecca? IIRC it was fitted in the Meteor as well.

[Lou Scannon]

You all seem to have forgotten the top-secret nav equipment fitted to the Transport Command Hastings aircraft. I remember convincing some V bomber aces that we had Brown Canvas fitted that out performed their Green Silks and Blue satins.

In reality we had a drift sight, sun-gun and Loran or Gee sets left over from WW11 (and this was in the sixties).

...but we didn't get lost...unlike some I could mention!

[TheChitterneFlyer]

"Brown Canvas"... fabulous!

[ian16th]

Dagama,

The Rebecca nomenclature comes from the Biblical Rebecca who was lost in the wilderness.

One of the ground beacons that it interrogated was Eureka! I've found it.

[BEagle]

Some of the terminology associated with this kit has stuck....

Indeed, Dan! 'Gadget bent' was still around not that long ago.

'Hayrake' was wrongly used by the Victor AAR school - they thought it meant 'TACAN channel'. Ot at least the bumbling old fool who briefed #3 VC10K course did!

On the Hunter fleet, we were still using 'Hayrake' and 'Pitchfork' at least 35 years after the end of WW2! As well as Rebecca/Eureka....:bored:

At Wittering, there was actually an NDB/Eur7 let-down procedure. Only problem being that the Rebecca interfered with the coffee-grinder ADF. So you were supposed to get yourself inbound in the vicinity using Eur7 (as we'd all been taught on the pre-A version of the Jet Provost T3/T5), then turn off the Rebecca box and use the ADF to descend to MDH.....:ooh: Fortunately 45/58 had a healthy disdain for IF and most pilots felt hypoxic above 250ft, so this daft procedure was left to the IREs to enjoy....

[Pontius Navigator]

The main element of the NBS fitted to the Victor and Vulcan B2s was the H2S Mk10. Sill in use in 1992, nearly 50 years since it's inception.

There were lots of WW2 kit with codenames. Monica and Oboe spring to mind. As does 'Parrot' - the code name for IFF, which was the very first appearance of the equipment we now know as the ATC transponder. Some of the terminology associated with this kit has stuck - which is why your transponder's response to an interrogation is known as a 'Squawk'.

And 'strangle your parrot'.

But it was H2S Mk9 in the Mk 1 Vs and H2S Mk9B (IIRC) in the Mk 2s.
The NBC was denoted by the Calc numbers 1, 2, 3 etc whereas that in the Mk 2s was 1A, 2A, 3A etc. Later, about 1967, the Calc 3A was replaced with redundant Calc 3s with a lower height range.

[Mactlsm1]

The Blue Parrot could be swapped out in much less than 2 hours - especially if you had a good team doing it. We used to be able to do it within an hour - including functional checks - but only if we had the "banana" which was the lifting hook that connected to the winch to take the Parrot out of the housing. Ideally it would be done in the hangar, but it could be (and was) done out on the line if you needed to get the jet ready for the next wave.

The Shackleton's AEW Radar (AN/APS 20 - not a "colour coded" radar) was another issue - the transmitter tray alone weighed about 900lbs and took 2 winches to change it. You didn't want to get underneath that, but some of my young JTs tried it, until I explained to them the error of their ways - well it was better than the paperwork if it dropped on them!

Mac

[Mactlsm1]

The Shack had Orange Harvest but I'm not sure that it qualified as an Avionic System! Being polite, you could say it was of limited utility.

Did you have to change it on the line in the frozen north? It was an avionics system then - according to the riggers. The functional check was - you switched it on and if the screen showed the faintest red light it was declared "serviceable"

Mac

[Mactlsm1]

You mention Blue Parrot in Buccs. As the Phantom radar was a US system, it used the US designator - AWG10/11/12. This applies to all US sourced kit which explains why there seems to be so few with such names.


In other words, it was a bit of an ad hoc system.

Tuc,
The US designations AWG/APS etc come from a different classification system but are not considered to be "ad hoc". Yes the Phantom radar was AWG which was an "Piloted Aircraft (A) Armament (W) Fire Control (G)" radar and the Shack was "Piloted Aircraft (A) Radar (P) Search (S)" radar. The Phantom radar was the original US system fitted to the USG ac (it was a pulse doppler - look down-shoot down capable system) but not "ad-hoc"

Mac

[Mactlsm1]

Was Loran Long Range Air Navigation..?

Omega LORAN was indeed LOng Range Airborne Navigation - as fitted to the Shack AEW. The ground stations were a chain of transmitters that the ac receiver used to triangulated the position of the ac relative to the transmitters. It was a successor to the Decca Loran/Loran-C system that used to be used by ships & ac (larger ac) prior to the advent of GPS.

Mac