Zooker...
I was at Eastern radar, on the civil side for a short time in 1974. Eastern civil provided the radar coverage for Preston ( Barton Hall) for the sector roughly E of Otteringham out to Bluebell (UB1). North from Gabbard to South Fisher (UA37). and the route Dogger-Newcastle (UR14)? The D man sat at Preston and was on the same frequency using the old 'push to talk intercom. (132.7 I think). The ATCA 2's (as was) manned the 'edge lit board', and the 'store dot display'. The edge lit board was exactly that, a board lit from the edge with a background format geographically arranged to represent the passage of aircraft through the sector. The ATCA task was to take flight plan details from the 'electro-writer' and transfer it to the edge-lit board. The ATCA would then do all the strip marking type tasks for the Radar ATCO using a chinagraph. Meanwhile, the ATCA manning the store-dot display would have a proper radar console. The way the thing worked was for the ATCO to inject a bright dot alongside the primary return which the ATCA would 'rate' so that it would fly with the radar return along the airway. The point of this was that the store dot would carry a code (A1 etc), this could be co-related to the 'tote board' display at the front of the ops room, think of it as a very rudimentary form of SSR label, and boy was it rudimentary. The pacing computer would gently let the store dot fall away from the primary return requiring endless fine tuning by the ATCA to get it to remain 'on target'. How the RAF coped with it on manouvering targets I just don't know!
Eastern mainly used the type 82 at this time but had access to the 84 & 85. The latter two radars had very slow time bases and thus had dead sectors. I think I'm right in saying that the 82 was designed as part of the old Bloodhound missile system and was a 10cm radar operating out to about 140nm. The power required to do this required sterile areas around the radar heads as the radiation would microwave anything that got too close.
I certainly enjoyed my short time at Eastern working with Des Adams and Winston Boardman, among others, who certainly helped the time pass quickly on a quiet duty. As it was a damn long time ago I apologise in advance for any unintended errors!
Oh. By the way, I do realise the reporting points probably mean nothing to you so think of it as a sort of combo of the MACC East and London North sea sectors, (very roughly). Me being an airports person I know little of such skullduggery!