Any ex-USAF radar technicians out here?

[kf6ueb]

I was trained on the ancient AN/FPS-20 (search) and AN/FPS-6 (height finder) radars, but was assigned to Port Austin AFS in 1973 to work on the amazingly huge AN/FPS-24. I believe these were built by GE in the early 60's. The parabolic antenna was so big it took 4 100-horsepower electric motors to turn the thing at 5 RPM. I think we put out about 10 MW (about 50 KW average) at 220 MHz. Range was about 220 miles. Head honcho was Bill Pickerell and Chuck Aigner taught me the AN/GLA-8 which provided the system-wide triggering and MTI (moving target indicator) processing. The power amplifiers were water-cooled and the transmission line was rigid coax (about 10 inches in diameter) filled with sulfur hexafloride. It was housed in a 6-story concrete tower. We must have had a pretty good-sized electric bill. By the way, Cedar Grove was a good place to drink beers when we weren't testing the receiver's MDS (should be about -113 dbm, if I recall).

73,

Rick

[K5CEY]

Rick, all I know about the Air Force is that I was TDY one time and was put up in an Air Force barracks. The luxury of those Air Force bunks! 6 inch thick mattress's. Us Army guys slept on 3 inch thick pads. But you and I had something in common: High powered radar systems. Everything I worked with was either pulse acquisition or pulse tracking. Our peanut whistle was 500kw and big bertha was 10 megawatts.
# # #Isn't it ironic how military radar and cold beer go hand and hand?
# # #Hope you get some response from some of the USAF guys.
# # # # # # # # # John #K5CEY

[w1jgv]

http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Keesler trained me on the MSQ-77 but my first
assignment was (then 1972) AF Systems Command,
Griffiss AFB, NY. ROME AIR DEVELOPMENT CENTER
(RADC) to several MSQ-1A's (MPS-19's) at Verona Test
Annex (off-base site). From those it was easy to jump
to an FPS-16 and then to a special project called PAMS.
It wasn't until I got sucked into SAC and before long I
was working on #MSQ-2, 39, 46, 77, 81's , TSQ-96 and
all that ancillary equipment. I haven't met a radar I
couldn't fix ! (of course with some logistics support).
Now I just concern myself with RF problems...
More later, 73's de John, N1VRC