Fareastdriver,
This is a bit of a puzzle, and I'm not sure I can help. For a start, it seems like a specialist weather radar of some sort, and a Met man might be a better bet - we have some, as I'm sure you know, for they Post here from time to time.
And the weather radars in your aircraft do the same job of picking up nasties on track, I believe (so said he, knowing nowt about it).
The only thing in my line that has an operator-controlled elevation radar was the ACR-7, and that'd be little use as the lobe was so narrow and the range so short. You mention operator control in azimuth, was that a rotating time base or some kind of reciprocating thing (like a PAR ?).
As far as picking up snow cu-nims in winter and the wandering T/storms in summer, both CPN-4 and AR-1 were excellent and powerful PPIs, quite good at seeing these out to 70 (? - have to look it up) miles. If they got to 30 miles and were heading to hit the field, we could shout in good time.
Your funny little thing has me foxed (some kind of oscilloscope ? a kin to the old "magic eye" valve we had - to confirm tuning - in the old domestic sets ?)
Best I can do, I'm afraid. Cheers,
Danny.
Last edited by Danny42C; 20th Aug 2013 at 14:24.
Reason: Typo.