Control Tower / Airfield - Where is it?

mbriscoe wrote:

Peter wrote:

What was this tower made of that caused it to tilt so much that a warning was needed? Having been in a swaying skyscraper I wouldn't fancy it much. I don't get seasick on ships but I did in that building.

Many years ago I worked at the Belmont transmitter in Lincolnshire for a short time. One day the phone rang and it was one of the RAF stations in that area, they wanted to know how much the mast swayed in the wind because it appeared on their radar Moving Target Indicator display at times (don't know how they got our number!).

Was Belmont the one south of Binbrook built mid '60s?
MTI operates by a 'gizmo' in the radar apparatus comparing successive sweeps of the radar; if it detects an echo, however small, which hasn't apparently moved in successive sweeps, it does not display it to the controller hence any sort of movement, however small, will show up if the radar happens to scan a small object at the right time and it's not quite in the same position as previously.

Yes, Belmont was the mast c8 miles SW of Binbrook.

Yes, I suppose it would sway a little bit, despite lots of wire 'stays', coz it was an effing tall mast... 1,154 feet (351.7 m) and could, therefore possibly show through mti - though I never saw that happen at Binbrook - either with the Cossor 787 or, later the Plessey AR-1.

A slight 'correction' on how mti works on 787/AR-1. It ain't successive sweeps; it's between successive transmitter pulses (usually1500pps).

ChrisTheAncient wrote:

Yes, Belmont was the mast c8 miles SW of Binbrook.

Yes, I suppose it would sway a little bit, despite lots of wire 'stays', coz it was an effing tall mast... 1,154 feet (351.7 m) and could, therefore possibly show through mti - though I never saw that happen at Binbrook - either with the Cossor 787 or, later the Plessey AR-1.

A slight 'correction' on how mti works on 787/AR-1. It ain't successive sweeps; it's between successive transmitter pulses (usually1500pps).

Never used a 787 although I saw one at Dunsfold before they got an AR15; I seem to remember the blip size was smaller than an AR1.
Maybe the Binbrook AR1 operated with staggered prf like ours at Farnborough so we didn't get the problem although, like other AR1s and Watchman, we did get loads of road and railway traffic showing eg the 'Hogs Back' road would show up clearly on our radar until we got the ASR10 where it was all 'processed' out and before we got a Watchman, we went to see the one at Lyneham and it gave a great view of traffic on the M4.