Gums wrote:ulse doppler was just being tested, and I think the YF-12 had an experimental one that later wound up in the Tomcat.
Gums sends...
Sortof. They're very different radars as far as I can tell.
ASG-18 (and TWO IRSTs)
AWG-9
And the ASG-18 was a "look-down, shoot-down" radar (don't know if it has to have PCM capability for that). One test included a YF-12 flying at 74,000 feet at Mach 3 and hitting a JQB-47 flying at 500 feet, 33 miles away.
"THE ASG-18, BY JIM EASTHAM
Author's Note: Jim Eastham has had an amazing career. As a test pilot for
Hughes Aircraft, he was responsible for testing most of the interceptor fire control
systems deployed by this country during the Cold War. Later, he moved to
Lockheed and was intimately involved in the YF-12 flight test program. This is
one of his stories.
Early in the testing and development of this system, we, Hughes, knew
what the power output was and that it could be dangerous if one was
exposed to the output of the transmitted signal. Also, it had a very high PRF
(pulsed repetition frequency) which was approximately 250 kilohertz, which is
about 250,000 pulses per second at an average power of about 5 kilowatts.
This was many times greater than the output of contemporary systems. Consequently,
many safety procedures were instituted.
The first was to put out red-rotating lights and each light fixture was
connected to a very long length of yellow plastic ribbon material. The rule
was that when the transmitter was turned on, the red rotating light was
turned on and great caution was observed to make sure no one got within
the field of the scan of the transmitted signal.
During one of the tests, one of the Lockheed mechanics walked up to
the yellow plastic ribbons, picked it up and started walking across in front of
the aircraft. Everyone immediately started yelling at this individual and asking
him if he wasn't aware that he could be injured by the radar? This character
pulled himself up and announced that they, Lockheed, had built the F-94
and consequently, "they knew all about radar!"
Now to put this in perspective, the F-94 used the original E-1 system
,which was in reality a converted General Electric tail-gun radar from a B-29.
This little system had an average power-output of 16 Watts, which was approximately
0.3-percent of the power of the ASG-18! Now this can be stated
another way and that is that the ASG-18 was 387 times more powerful than
the original E-1 radar!
Now one can't argue with stupidity; therefore, Dick La Fleur, Hughes project
manager, devised a demonstration which could show the power-output and
demonstrate that one could be injured by the radar. He had the facility-maintenance
people get a standard 4x8-foot sheet of plywood and it was placed
directly in front of the aircraft and the ASG-18 antenna was pointed directly at
the sheet of plywood. Also, the antenna was not scanning at that time.
The Lockheed flightline mechanics thought this was rather humorous
and they were making a joke of this demonstration until a brown spot began
to appear on the plywood, and then it began to smoke. After a short while,
the wood actually began to burn and flames began to appear on the spot
that was being radiated!
This demonstrated that the radar was potentially dangerous and made
the point that it was a real hazard to get up close and in front of the system
when it was turned on! Actually, we got a bit of an "over-kill" and no one
would get near the system when it was turned on!
I might add that when the word filtered up to Beale and the tanker
boom operators heard about his test, it created a bit of anxiety and we
would always inform them that the radar was turned off before we refueled.
"There I was. . ."