Wire wrap was devised by Bell Labs in the 1940's to address some of the several disadvantages of soldering. The other big 'cold jointing' technology, crimping was devised for the same reason.

It seems that the Apollo Guidance Computer was a wire wrap job too.

This is a picture of an AI23 not AI23B
The roll axis rotated 90 deg

AI23B
 

And as far as I know Lavenham church tower never suffered any ill effect from being used as an AI23B test target to lock onto from the radar bay window. Their fault for building the church directly opposite the large window! I think it was 7 point something miles but it was many, many years ago that I last did it.

We had an AI23b pointing out of a perspex window in Trenchard Hall RAFC in the 1980s. Used to be able to track cars up the road from Cranwell Village!!

From Binbrook's Radar Bay, looking through the large window across the fields, Belmont TV Mast was the reference target

Similar to how Ferranti demonstrated their radars at South Gyle. A lollipop man was told to march up and down the main car park.

When I was at Wattishambles we had a group visit that included the vicar of Lavenham who was most miffed that we "radiated" his church tower. As I recall we expected at least -1v on the agc meter to consider the lock good enough to send out the radar!

Ohh Dear - pull up a sandbag.

Almost every Sperry-Univac Mainframe used wire wrapped pins from the 50's until the 90's. 1004, 90/25, 90/30, 90/40, 1103, 1120, 1140, 1160, 1170, 1180, 11/90, 2200/600, 2200/900, etc. For the cousins, the 1004 also went to sea in rather large boats, Ohh wire wraps and sea air, what a combination. :eek:

I also remember (5?) a limit on how many times the same wire could be "unwrapped" and "rewrapped" before it was too brittle to bend effectively.

Each corner of the square wrapped pin also represented a single contact point and eventually the pin also became rounded and useless. Some back panel pins were completely inaccessible and necessitated some innovative techniques to rewire the open (or shorting) connection.

I always thought I was rather sad...:{

Imagegear

In the mid-80s whilst on MASUAS my QFI (Uncle Rod) arranged for me to visit a buddy of his who flew at Binbrook. I spent half a day being shown around the radar bay and recall a radar on its test stand radiating through the big window.

On one of the benches was a drill that spun a piece of wood (about 2" x 3/4" x 18") along its axis. As the wood turned they wrapped a length of uninsulated wire round it. After this they would cut through the wire along the length of the wood on opposite sides to produce hundreds of U-shaped pieces of wire. These were then used to wrap around the multiple pins in the radar boards to link them together.

I'm sure they told me that they used to have to buy these links from Ferranti before they found the much cheaper in-house solution!

Here's one in situ

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...psthfdadao.jpg

This sounds right, only we had a locally manufactured metal assembly which you hand-wound, making about 50 links at a time. You had the two-piece block in a vice and hit the centre section with a hammer and it sheared the wire into links. You spent a couple of hours each week making a crate of links. Boring! The first thing you learned on Blue Orchid Doppler was there was one link that, if broken while the Transmitter was on, blew hundreds of transistors. Given they were all encapsulated, that effectively scrapped the LRU as nobody fancied digging them out with a PACE unit.

I can't remember now how many functions the hand controller had, 50 years ago I could operate them all by touch while peering at the B Scope. Anybody got a picture?

And 164798 -
The dish orientation (2 half dishes side by side) was the same on AI23 and AI23B. The RF side didn't change, although the electronics behid wer somwhat different.

I do remember morning one of the AI23 Course - 'Before tomorrow go out and buy a set of coloured pencils to colour in all the relays by function set, and a bunch of hole reinforcements for the ring-binder holes'.

Best I can do at the moment, I may have a better one but would need to scan it tomorrow

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...ps9xa14iph.jpg

I knew one pilot who acquired a hand controller, bored out the centre to fit a thread, and fitted it as a gear stick handle - wired to turn on and dip lights, indicators, horn etc.

The advantages of a left hand stick in a UK car.

Here is a picture of AI24:

http://kingfisher.scene7.com/is/imag...8719100046_01c

Oops! Sorry, that's pre-production version. Here is a picture of AI24:

http://www.projectoceanvision.com/vo...nter_ai24a.jpg

Anyone know if Typhoon's Captor is AI25?

LJ

FMICW - otherwise known as F*** Me, It Can't Work...

Originally called ECR90 during development and now simply CAPTOR-D (or M) for the MSA version, CAPTOR-E will be the AESA version...

-RP

Leon, you naughty boy. The F2/F3 had the world's finest weather radar; not much use for anything else, mind you....not mention a TD circle smaller than the target....

I believe you replied to my pm about this picture, but I cannot access the pm. Unfortunately there appears to be a problem with my inbox (reported as full with only one message there!). I didn't want you to think I was ignoring you.

AI23B/C
 

I don't recall AI23 having S band wotsits.
This is 23B/C:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3986602df4.jpg