PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Flying the Canberra
View Single Post
Old 21st Mar 2012, 16:52
  #95 (permalink)  
rlsbutler
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Axminster Devon
Age: 84
Posts: 166
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Orange Putter

Spectre #94

Orange Putter was a little active radar, of 1950's vintage I guess, to be found in the tails of PR 7 and B15 (and no doubt other operational) Canberras of my time - FEAF 1962-4. It gave a coarse quadrant display of a threat from behind to the nav plotter. I never knowingly saw the display myself. It gave too many spurious warnings so it would have been a worrying nuisance on an operational sortie (you hoped); of course you would only switch it on briefly for fear of actually attracting trouble.

If however you had a high level night exercise with the promise of an interception, it was then useful to time the start of your version of the Lancaster corkscrew. You might never see the Sea Vixen or Javelin concerned (which you could usually by day), but I remember no post-flight crowing about being "splashed" so it presumably worked.
rlsbutler is offline