Time to scramble - RAF F4s on QRA
PLE pahh!
In the late 60’s it was a ‘Fool Line’ for the Lightning; IIRC about 350nm around Leuchars, with dotted lines for Lossie and other airfields (not all were approved for QRA ops except in an emergency). If you went outside the Fool Line you wouldn’t get back.
Time to intercept obviously depended on the distance flown, and of greater significance the distance of first ground / AEW contact. Thus with Norwegian alerting and a bit of guesswork on tracks, intercepts out to 300nm were possible. This was improved with the Tue/Thurs tanker training flights, which later became tanker Q flights.
There were also some routines, like 20 Jan every 4 years to the US East coast and back; also Bear flights to Cuba, and always a bevy of flights with a US fleet exchange in/out of the Med or a carrier fleet in the N Atlantic.
I recall one helpful civilian airline who reported an ‘air-miss’ (of several miles) on a Bear in the Faeroes Iceland gap.
Then there were a few ‘int’ alerted flights, where a telephone call would suggest a scramble in 2-3hrs (time for dinner in the mess); most of these were spot on.
On a few occasions there were ‘real’ scrambles, some with a buster call – supersonic. Generally these were ‘unidentified’ tracks (although probably expected) of aircraft returning from places North, and East of North; B 707, Victor, Canberra, and U2 (never confirmed). More often than not these resulted in a recall before intercept.
In the late 60’s it was a ‘Fool Line’ for the Lightning; IIRC about 350nm around Leuchars, with dotted lines for Lossie and other airfields (not all were approved for QRA ops except in an emergency). If you went outside the Fool Line you wouldn’t get back.
Time to intercept obviously depended on the distance flown, and of greater significance the distance of first ground / AEW contact. Thus with Norwegian alerting and a bit of guesswork on tracks, intercepts out to 300nm were possible. This was improved with the Tue/Thurs tanker training flights, which later became tanker Q flights.
There were also some routines, like 20 Jan every 4 years to the US East coast and back; also Bear flights to Cuba, and always a bevy of flights with a US fleet exchange in/out of the Med or a carrier fleet in the N Atlantic.
I recall one helpful civilian airline who reported an ‘air-miss’ (of several miles) on a Bear in the Faeroes Iceland gap.
Then there were a few ‘int’ alerted flights, where a telephone call would suggest a scramble in 2-3hrs (time for dinner in the mess); most of these were spot on.
On a few occasions there were ‘real’ scrambles, some with a buster call – supersonic. Generally these were ‘unidentified’ tracks (although probably expected) of aircraft returning from places North, and East of North; B 707, Victor, Canberra, and U2 (never confirmed). More often than not these resulted in a recall before intercept.
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Of course to calculate one's PLE, one really needed to know where you were. The FG1s were not best placed in that respect, as demonstrated in that famous incident.
And remembered in the words of the hilarious song sung at every opportunity. How did it go? Something like "You can chuck your tanks and missiles in the Firth of Tay, you don't need them throw them away...." etc
Vernon
And remembered in the words of the hilarious song sung at every opportunity. How did it go? Something like "You can chuck your tanks and missiles in the Firth of Tay, you don't need them throw them away...." etc
Vernon
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Thank you re PLE, another hole filled in the knowledge bank. 
Why do we have the tankers so far from the QRA airfields?
My simple civvie brain is often confused. If someone is launched from Leuchars it must take some time for the tanker to get to the QRA aircraft if it heads off towards the Northeast.
Or is the setup such that because of the surrounding allies and the CAOC network we will always have enough notice to launch Timmy Tristar or Veronica Voyager in plenty of time?
Why do we have the tankers so far from the QRA airfields?
My simple civvie brain is often confused. If someone is launched from Leuchars it must take some time for the tanker to get to the QRA aircraft if it heads off towards the Northeast.
Or is the setup such that because of the surrounding allies and the CAOC network we will always have enough notice to launch Timmy Tristar or Veronica Voyager in plenty of time?
Why do we have the tankers so far from the QRA airfields?
(not a DH89!, that was the name for the year round standby system which had a tanker crew on a maximum 3 hours readiness during their week on standby)
On occasions if a Bear just "popped up" we could have a "Dragonfly Mobile" when a tanker on a normal North Sea towline sortie was pulled off to RV with the Leuchars QRA aircraft and head off North. This usually meant a recovery to Leuchars. I see on 4th March 1972 we were diverted off Towline Two, flew three more Dragonfly sorties from Leuchars (with the late Art Field) in the following days and recovered to Marham on the 9th. I assume a change of kit must have been brought up for us by other Marham crews who joined us subsequently, or we'd have been pretty ripe after 6 days!
I've just realised that was nearly 42 years ago, fgs! Still, I assume a similar arrangement must be in place for Tristars/Voyagers as the transit times are no faster
Last edited by Tankertrashnav; 11th Jan 2014 at 15:28.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
And why the the Shack have that spark plug looking thing on top for? I first thought HF aerial but you didn't see that on other aircraft so that idea went out of the window.
...The Shackleton also carried the “Orange Harvest” radar warning receiver (RWR). This could give the bearing of any radars which illuminated the Shackleton; the display was a 3” cathode ray tube above the “C” operator’s position. The receiver for “Orange Harvest” looked like a giant spark plug and sat on top of the fuselage.....
Radar site: MRS (Master Radar Site) which became SOC (Sector Operations Centre).
Man running radar site: CONEX (Control Executive) which became MC (Master Controller).
Man running control team: CC (Chief Controller) which became FA (Fighter Allocator).
Man running identification team: DC (Display Controller*) which became TPO (Track Production Officer)
* Not to be confused with the DC in the bunker at HQSTC who was responsible for authorising the QRA scramble. Usually a maritime/transport Sqn Ldr on a ground tour, which lead to many head banging moments. Especially as the MC at Buchan had an arrangement for exchanging Int with the Americans in Iceland, who had their own Int plus E3As, which we were were expressly forbidden to tell the DC or QRA!!. Which lead to many a tanker and Q burning holes in the sky for many hours when the Bear Fs were north or west of Iceland.
Oh!!!, the hours spent on the Donald Duck secure voice trying to persuade the DC either a) please, pretty please, launch the QRA; or b) trust me, please don't launch the QRA on your "hot int".....
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The Orange Harvest control and display are the small panel to the left of the square box (High Volts Power Pack) above the "C" (right hand above) radar scope. The actual display is the tiny 3"" diameter circular display. The "spark plug" was specific to set frequencies for the RWR - we usually flew with F band receiver(?) but other bands were available. It was pretty useless, but against the F4s in Keflavic it gave us a useful handle on the radar scan being used and when it locked up onto us - a chap in the back could then throw bundles of chaff out of the beam window! We used to drop it through the flare shoot in the floor, but the strips of metal could foul the micro-switches in the tail wheel so were stopped from this practice! The Orange Harvest also picked up the occasional ships radar and we used to practice homings (see post on what to do during radar failure sorties).
If I could, I would arrow the radar volts up switch in the panel between the "A" and "B" scope, but I cannot on this blog. As for a photograph of the Klystron - sorry, I don't have one but it was a standard WW2 10cm Klystron as used in H2S etc (or very similar I am told).
Edited to add that the ground-crew used to have a giant clockwork key that fitted onto the top of the "spark plug" and on detachments to other bases/air shows etc, they climbed on top of the aircraft and wound it up before engine start (literally a wind-up)!
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While we are on a roll with old radars....
The Klystron was powered by the rheostat that used to jam during power up as mentioned in the posts above. The pulses were produced by a piece of kit called a "Hydrogen Filled Thyrotron" (Sp?). This was a piece of kit similar to a fluorescent light tube but filled with Hydrogen. Low voltage pulses provided by an amplifier (parametric amplifier or PA) would hit the terminals and cause the gas to ionise - once ionised it would allow the radar waves from the klystron to be transmitted in sharp edge pulses. No TWTs for the AN/APS 20F. (The "F" bit was a digital video accumulator system attached to the receiver but it didn't work particularly well and we usually stuck with raw radar.
The small radar scopes did not have any afterglow and therefore all responses were marked by a chinagraph pencil. This was repeated scan by scan - if the contacts left a pencil trail at 300 kts then it was an aircraft - 15 kts and it was a ship!
Being a basic pulse radar, we could operate over sea only and the radar was subject to sea returns out to a range dependent upon height and the sea state. At about 2,000ft, we had sea returns out to about 40 miles and so had a useful range against fighter size targets between about 45 and 70 miles (on a good day). The idea was to set up intercepts running at a tangent to us so that we did not lose the contacts due to either the max range or sea return. Even then, raw radar only gave us a return at about 2 positive hits every 6 - the rest were added by DR with the chinagraph.
As PN has stated, we could in theory detect targets out to 200 nm, but this was very rare although the radar loved head-on detections of bears due to the big props and it was not unknown to get early pick-ups on Q.
A good controller had the ability to lie convincingly to the fighter on the radio and pretend that he knew exactly where everything was. (Alpha control was to be avoided at all costs if possible). We had raw IFF to help us - these left an eyebrow behind the radar contact - the angular size of the eyebrow dependent upon the IFF interrogator beam-width which was quite large! To decode the IFF response, we put a video "box" over the eyebrow and this would count the received pulses and work out the decode for us. (The eyebrow was made up of all the received pulses from IFF). The decode was displayed on the panel to the left of the radar scope (to the left of the Orange Harvest in the picture above). An emergency squawk gave us the standard 4 eyebrows! Needless to say, two aircraft in close proximity gave us problems with garble and juggling the fighter behind a squawking target often proved embarrassing.
The Klystron was powered by the rheostat that used to jam during power up as mentioned in the posts above. The pulses were produced by a piece of kit called a "Hydrogen Filled Thyrotron" (Sp?). This was a piece of kit similar to a fluorescent light tube but filled with Hydrogen. Low voltage pulses provided by an amplifier (parametric amplifier or PA) would hit the terminals and cause the gas to ionise - once ionised it would allow the radar waves from the klystron to be transmitted in sharp edge pulses. No TWTs for the AN/APS 20F. (The "F" bit was a digital video accumulator system attached to the receiver but it didn't work particularly well and we usually stuck with raw radar.
The small radar scopes did not have any afterglow and therefore all responses were marked by a chinagraph pencil. This was repeated scan by scan - if the contacts left a pencil trail at 300 kts then it was an aircraft - 15 kts and it was a ship!
Being a basic pulse radar, we could operate over sea only and the radar was subject to sea returns out to a range dependent upon height and the sea state. At about 2,000ft, we had sea returns out to about 40 miles and so had a useful range against fighter size targets between about 45 and 70 miles (on a good day). The idea was to set up intercepts running at a tangent to us so that we did not lose the contacts due to either the max range or sea return. Even then, raw radar only gave us a return at about 2 positive hits every 6 - the rest were added by DR with the chinagraph.
As PN has stated, we could in theory detect targets out to 200 nm, but this was very rare although the radar loved head-on detections of bears due to the big props and it was not unknown to get early pick-ups on Q.
A good controller had the ability to lie convincingly to the fighter on the radio and pretend that he knew exactly where everything was. (Alpha control was to be avoided at all costs if possible). We had raw IFF to help us - these left an eyebrow behind the radar contact - the angular size of the eyebrow dependent upon the IFF interrogator beam-width which was quite large! To decode the IFF response, we put a video "box" over the eyebrow and this would count the received pulses and work out the decode for us. (The eyebrow was made up of all the received pulses from IFF). The decode was displayed on the panel to the left of the radar scope (to the left of the Orange Harvest in the picture above). An emergency squawk gave us the standard 4 eyebrows! Needless to say, two aircraft in close proximity gave us problems with garble and juggling the fighter behind a squawking target often proved embarrassing.
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Thank you Gents,
Like the tale about the "wind up" key. When you recall that some aircraft did have such a start up procedure, like the Me109, I bet that confused a few folk.
Strange as it may seem to others, I think I would have been at home in the back of any AEW or Elint aircraft if I was allowed to play with the kit there.
Radio and radar would always attract my attention at airshows. If the queues were not to long I would visit the E3, I would loved to have seen the kit working in the Nimrod R1 or a Sentinel but suspect I would be locked up afterwards.
Like the tale about the "wind up" key. When you recall that some aircraft did have such a start up procedure, like the Me109, I bet that confused a few folk.
Strange as it may seem to others, I think I would have been at home in the back of any AEW or Elint aircraft if I was allowed to play with the kit there.
Radio and radar would always attract my attention at airshows. If the queues were not to long I would visit the E3, I would loved to have seen the kit working in the Nimrod R1 or a Sentinel but suspect I would be locked up afterwards.
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Very interesting Wensleydale ...
Maybe of further interest to others is the fact that ...
Maybe of further interest to others is the fact that ...
The klystron was first developed in 1939 by R.H. and S.F. Varian at Stanford University USA. This basic design was then improved upon by R. Sutton and his team at the Admiralty Signal School, Bristol, towards the end of 1940 by the development of an operating reflex klystron which was subsequently tested in early 1941.
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Wensleydale,
As recounted elsewhere before I managed a visit to Neatishead during a night exercise watching a 2 v 2 (43 sqdn v 56 sqdn I think) where an East coast range was the target.
The controllers where we sat were good, one a German officer on exchange. For their IFF decoding they had a tracker ball but could only read four a minute, based on the revs per minute of the radar head. And yes plenty of chinagraph used.
It was a fantastic visit, albeit some 15-20 years ago now. Although my friend and I were both gobsmacked at how old the kit was compared to what we had been before at LATCC in West Drayton. All very manual, hands on stuff.
As recounted elsewhere before I managed a visit to Neatishead during a night exercise watching a 2 v 2 (43 sqdn v 56 sqdn I think) where an East coast range was the target.
The controllers where we sat were good, one a German officer on exchange. For their IFF decoding they had a tracker ball but could only read four a minute, based on the revs per minute of the radar head. And yes plenty of chinagraph used.
It was a fantastic visit, albeit some 15-20 years ago now. Although my friend and I were both gobsmacked at how old the kit was compared to what we had been before at LATCC in West Drayton. All very manual, hands on stuff.
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At the risk of totally drifting off thread....
You can see just how small the radar scopes are! Crew at work with chinagraphs in hand! From memory, from the left: MF (Taco in "B" seat); CD (AEW Controller in "C" Seat); AA(?) in radio operator's seat (2nd Nav); AF(?) in Nav 1 seat. Probably early 80s as we still had yellow life jackets then.
You can see just how small the radar scopes are! Crew at work with chinagraphs in hand! From memory, from the left: MF (Taco in "B" seat); CD (AEW Controller in "C" Seat); AA(?) in radio operator's seat (2nd Nav); AF(?) in Nav 1 seat. Probably early 80s as we still had yellow life jackets then.
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In the photo in Wensleydale's post 50 above you can clearly see the ashtrays at each crew station. On my one and only Shack trip I saw the ashtrays and it made the aircraft even more of a time warp. What a machine.
Rgds
Vernon
Rgds
Vernon
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Clicker,
Ref the R1. some pictures here
Nimrod R1 XW664 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
looks like 664 is complete at the aero park. You will see most of the LRUs are adaptions of commercially available stuff.
sorry to disappoint - no kyclatrons!
with reference to Wensleydale and his ashtrays. When we took the ones off the R (SRIM 4006) circa 1985? made way for extra tea cup holders. More fuss was made over tea cups and butty boxes than anything else.
I think the worse thing I was responsible for was the condoms over the Starwindow keyboards. to keep the tea out. They came off after the first cal flight and never got on the 2nd and 3rd a/c
Sorry for the tread drift.
Ref the R1. some pictures here
Nimrod R1 XW664 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
looks like 664 is complete at the aero park. You will see most of the LRUs are adaptions of commercially available stuff.
sorry to disappoint - no kyclatrons!
with reference to Wensleydale and his ashtrays. When we took the ones off the R (SRIM 4006) circa 1985? made way for extra tea cup holders. More fuss was made over tea cups and butty boxes than anything else.
I think the worse thing I was responsible for was the condoms over the Starwindow keyboards. to keep the tea out. They came off after the first cal flight and never got on the 2nd and 3rd a/c
Sorry for the tread drift.
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We didn't use the ashtrays as they had to be cleaned after the trip! We used a paper cup with a little water in the bottom. On long missions while we did voicetel ("New Track, New Track") the trick was to light your next cigarette from the stub of the last one - the cups used to fill up quickly.
On one of my crews, 8 out of 9 of us used to smoke. The one poor unfortunate used to fasten himself into the isolation of the "C" seat with the curtain pulled tight round in order to try to escape the fog that descended from the ceiling (after 8 hours you didn't need to light up as there was enough nicotine in the atmosphere - especially when the pipe smokers got going).
One of the captains was a pipe smoker - he used to fly with his cockpit window open and toss the finished matches out of the aircraft after lighting up which he did many-many times during the sortie. To stop him borrowing and using the crew's entire match supply, the smokers clubbed together and bought him a nice lighter. First trip and (you've guessed it) the window flew open and out was tossed the lighter as habit took over!
On one of my crews, 8 out of 9 of us used to smoke. The one poor unfortunate used to fasten himself into the isolation of the "C" seat with the curtain pulled tight round in order to try to escape the fog that descended from the ceiling (after 8 hours you didn't need to light up as there was enough nicotine in the atmosphere - especially when the pipe smokers got going).
One of the captains was a pipe smoker - he used to fly with his cockpit window open and toss the finished matches out of the aircraft after lighting up which he did many-many times during the sortie. To stop him borrowing and using the crew's entire match supply, the smokers clubbed together and bought him a nice lighter. First trip and (you've guessed it) the window flew open and out was tossed the lighter as habit took over!