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Old 8th Apr 2009, 08:18
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A I
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
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I reckon SATCC was nearer the Peggy Bedford than the Maggies and Black and Decker was further on towards Slough from the PB.

On the radar subject, the landing strip in Surrey had a Marconi 232 and an Plessey? ACR6, which were replaced with a 264 and a T4008 which was (I think) an AR1 with and ACR6 head on it. Gatters got SSR in about 1980 which got rid of the special ident method used by many (guess when it's through the overhead, ask for a heading, if the DF trace was south east then it was clear of the outbounds so descend and wait for the blip to reappear before confirming ident by a turn onto base. If you didn't do this, by the time the blip had reappeared near East Grinstead, you didn't have a scooby of getting it down from MSL in the RVA!!

On the North Sea helicopter point, the story I heard was that back in the early 70's a Highland Radar controller was chatting to a heli pilot in the pub and said "we can see you tracking out to the to rigs (they all used Decca tracks based on the ADN VOR then), so why not give us a call". He did and that was the start of the service. The service from Aberdeen was much later (as was the one from Sumburgh). My memory is that we could see tracks 80 miles from the head at 500 feet but that could well be rubbish. I believe that the type 80 was actually tilted down to give the air defenders sight of attacking aircraft. Canberras on Taceval were quite sporty - they followed the Decca Tracks into the overhead and could fly almost as slow as the helos!!

A I

Last edited by A I; 8th Apr 2009 at 08:28.
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