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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0753.PDF
FLIGHT, 3 j^ 1960 753 SYSTEM SURVEY NATO Decca Trials FOLLOWING initial trials with a Fiat G.91 in Britain last year,tactical Decca navigation has been tested more extensively with a specially installed chain in the Rome area. The installationwas made at the request of SHAPE and three aircraft, a G.91R and two F-lOOFs, were fined with a special lightweight Deccareceiver. The chain was also used in Decca's Viking for a very successful demonstration for the civil air traffic control authorities.American, British and Italian air force pilots completed a con- siderable number of simulated strike sorties in the military aircraft,attacking a wide variety of targets in many types of terrain and often in poor weather. It is claimed that the pilots consideredthat, with the help of Decca, they could make accurate attacks in ceilings as low as 500ft and visibility of i mile or less. GCAapproaches were made at the end of each sortie and, with Decca, the main weather limitation is reported to have been altimeterinaccuracy. The official report on the trials is yet to be issued. More CMC Doppler AN order for eight CMA-601 navigation computers and for afurther four Doppler radars has been placed with the Canadian Marconi Co by KLM. This airline's initial DC-8 was the firstproduction example of the type to be delivered from the Douglas factory with a complete and operational Doppler radar. TheCMA-623 Doppler was in fact used throughout transatlantic delivery flight to Amsterdam. BMEWS in Britain ACCORDING to recent advertisements in the press RCA GreatBritain Ltd are seeking to recruit 450 men of all grades for the installation, evaluation, operation and maintenance of the Britishballistic missile early-warning system to be constructed at Fyling- dales Moor. The first group of senior technicians are to be trainedat the RCA missile and surface radar division at Moorestown, NJ, and will subsequently work at Sunbury-on-Thames and Fyling-dales Moor. The British contribution to the cost of this BMEWS station is £43m. The Bendix Corporation FROM June 1, Bendix Aviation Corporation has changed its nameto the Bendix Corporation. Under its new title the company "hopes to project the broad and continually expanding diversityof its activities in a clearer picture to the country's business, industrial and financial communities, to its government customersand to the general public." Automotive and aviation work accounted for 65 per cent of the corporation's business during1959, but Bendix feel that the name should also relate to its work in the fields of electronics, missile and space vehicle equipmentand nuclear engineering. Field Aircraft Services Ltd at London Airport are UnitedKingdom distributors and service representatives for the follow- ing Bendix divisions: Bendix Products, Indiana; Bendix Radio,Baltimore; Bendix Filter, Michigan; Bendix Eclipse-Pioneer, New Jersey; Bendix Pioneer-Central, Iowa; Bendix Red-Bank, NewJersey; Bendix Utica, New York; Bendix Pacific, North Holly- wood; and Bendix Cincinnati, Ohio. Certain Bendix products arealso manufactured under licence in Britain by Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd. Automatic radio aids and a Link trainer in General Precision System's demonstration trailer. (See news-item in Col. 2) The US Army's new ruby maser unit and its liquid- helium tank, described immediately below Cold Crystal ILLUSTRATED above is a new US Army ruby maser unit for a radaror communications receiver in X-band using K-band pumping. The cryostat containing the maser is at the lower end of the wave-guide and the tank at the right contains liquid helium which cools the unit to about 5°K. Tests are now in progress at the US ArmySignal Research and Development Laboratory. Link Trainer Sales Tour ALREADY well advanced is a European sales tour by a mobilecaravan unit of General Precision Systems Ltd containing a single-seat Link Trainer equipped with a four-station automaticradio aids unit. The radio aids can be added to the standard Link trainer to simulate automatically all up-to-date radio naviga-tion facilities. Solid-State Analogue Computer THE research division of Servomechanisms Inc has completedinitial trials of a solid-state analogue computer which has no moving parts. The components consist of vacuum-depositedmaterial which, according to the manufacturers, has sufficient versatility to simulate the components of the standard analoguecomputers and has the same input and output requirements as the costly precision geared units generally used at present. Thesolid-state units could be applied to airborne and space vehicles and, Servomechanisms claim, will eventually take the place ofpresent units. An ADF Director Instrument A DIRECTOR cross-pointer presentation has now been developedby Aircraft Radio Corporation for use with MF beacons and ranges. The course director itself consists of cross-pointers withina circular compass display which is in fact a modification of the standard VHF director formerly produced by the company forVOR and ILS flying. These functions it can still perform, but now added is a special computer with its own compass unit andslaved directional gyro and a computer for ADF bearings. It is now possible to select an inbound or outbound bearing to beflown in relation to an NDB or range station and to obtain needle- central guidance to that radial and subsequently along it by theindications of the vertical cross-pointer needle. The components of the CD-4, as it is called, together weigh 18.21b and 51b of thisis accounted for by the directional gyro. Failure of the MF course computer will not interrupt the operation of the VHF section.According to Aviation Week, the ARC system is to be placed on the commercial market in July at a cost of $3,200.ARC originally developed the CD-4 to a US Army requirement for tactical use of NDBs by low-flying light aircraft. They claimthat the system might also be useful for helicopters flying in either open or built-up areas. The US Army Aviation Board hascompleted a fixed-wing evaluation at Fort Rucker and environ- mental testing is in hand.
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