Primary radar systems at British airports.
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Our Decca 424 was orange. We have succumbed to flat screens now. I understand the old 1950s kit has gone to the Plessey museum on the IOW. The fluoride had lost almost all of its persistence towards the end. We were vectoring fast-decaying pin-heads.
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By the way, I do like the loudspeakers in the bottom right corner of your picture. They look the same as those in the Leeds Bradford tower between 1967 and 1986. Love the old kit, e.g. Pye Tulip microphones, Astrolite headsets and so on.
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Yeah, the Pye Tulip got very floppy, especially by the time we got to 2 miles...quite theatrical really...not enough hands...
Eight point three has meant that the chunky old speakers and solid SPST switches have had to go. Now everything is 'touch display' with all channels piped through one speaker. All very pretty, but all the tactility has gone.
Eight point three has meant that the chunky old speakers and solid SPST switches have had to go. Now everything is 'touch display' with all channels piped through one speaker. All very pretty, but all the tactility has gone.
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Yeah, the Pye Tulip got very floppy, especially by the time we got to 2 miles...quite theatrical really...not enough hands...
Eight point three has meant that the chunky old speakers and solid SPST switches have had to go. Now everything is 'touch display' with all channels piped through one speaker. All very pretty, but all the tactility has gone.
Eight point three has meant that the chunky old speakers and solid SPST switches have had to go. Now everything is 'touch display' with all channels piped through one speaker. All very pretty, but all the tactility has gone.
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Mooncrest, I think you're correct about the displays being green monochrome, but having orange filters over them. Even the processed Plessey 22" 'flat-tops' we had at 'CC were like that too, they even had cursor lines and a rotating bearing-ring. Vectoring was a bit like driving a bus!
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[QUOTE=ZOOKER;10030121]Mooncrest, I think you're correct about the displays being green monochrome, but having orange filters over them. Even the processed Plessey 22" 'flat-tops' we had at 'CC were like that too, they even had cursor lines and a rotating bearing-ring. Vectoring was a bit like driving a bus![/QUOT
Sounds like fun. The monochrome displays initially used at LBA with the Watchman also had the rotating ring thing. They were upright...sitting on borrowed canteen tables!
Sounds like fun. The monochrome displays initially used at LBA with the Watchman also had the rotating ring thing. They were upright...sitting on borrowed canteen tables!
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The new 'all processed' radar systems all seem to be giving problems at airfields providing services outside CAS. In the Isle of Man (Ronaldsway) a Selex ATCR-33S PSR was installed in 2011 together with a Wide Area Multilateration Mode-S SSR. It only became operational towards the end of 2017, with several limitations imposed on services outside CAS, compared with the Watchman which remains on standby.
The Farnborough head Techie (who of course knew nothing about how ATC was actually done) had apparently ordered these because their projected life was longer than orange phosphor tubes.
We managed to get Cossor to swap them but they weren't too happy about doing it and I'm sure we had one or two tubes which were second hand because thay already had 'burn' marks on them from a video map which definitely wasn't ours.
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Mooncrest,
I remember doing a liaison visit to LBA.....We came via Pole Hill, by road, and took pictures of the DVOR on the way. The VCR was functioning normally, but Approach was being 're-furbished'.....Everything was balanced on card-tables, with lots of exposed wires hanging out of things.......Early 1980s.
I remember doing a liaison visit to LBA.....We came via Pole Hill, by road, and took pictures of the DVOR on the way. The VCR was functioning normally, but Approach was being 're-furbished'.....Everything was balanced on card-tables, with lots of exposed wires hanging out of things.......Early 1980s.
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Mooncrest,
I remember doing a liaison visit to LBA.....We came via Pole Hill, by road, and took pictures of the DVOR on the way. The VCR was functioning normally, but Approach was being 're-furbished'.....Everything was balanced on card-tables, with lots of exposed wires hanging out of things.......Early 1980s.
I remember doing a liaison visit to LBA.....We came via Pole Hill, by road, and took pictures of the DVOR on the way. The VCR was functioning normally, but Approach was being 're-furbished'.....Everything was balanced on card-tables, with lots of exposed wires hanging out of things.......Early 1980s.
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You may be correct Mooncrest.
I took a couple of Kodachrome slides which will have the processing date on them, (granted, not the month of the visit)....If I can find them, I'll report back.
I took a couple of Kodachrome slides which will have the processing date on them, (granted, not the month of the visit)....If I can find them, I'll report back.
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If it's still in use, I believe they had the SSR fed in from the NATS radar at Lytham St Annes. They didn't have their own interrogator because there is a policy in the UK not to over-interrogate because it causes too much fruiting and garbling, although the St Annes radar had its own little 'quirk' connected with garbling caused by the radar reflecting from a gasometer; gasometer empty - no problems; gasometer full and the reflection would give you a primary blip at about 90 deg on the display from where it should have been.
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I'm unsure if there are any civil S511 installations left in the UK. I know that Bristol, Cardiff, East Midlands, Newcastle and Southend once had them but I believe those have all gone. As for its Plessey contemporary, the Watchman, it lives on at Leeds Bradford and perhaps still at Humberside, Teesside and Southampton. Maybe the MOD airfields still have the Watchman too.
By the way, did the S511 use magnetron technology rather than travelling wave tube ?
By the way, did the S511 use magnetron technology rather than travelling wave tube ?
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