[modeleng] Re: scottish inventions

Hi Peter and thanks for taking the time to explain your interpretation of 
the invention of the radar ? i cant really comment any further i would have 
to research into the subject further but my real interests are far from 
radar but not far from this site
thanks again
 regards
Kenny
Skye


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <peter.chadwick@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <modeleng@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 6:00 PM
Subject: [modeleng] Re: scottish inventions


> Kenny,
>>Physicist, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, was the mind behind the radar network
> on
> the coast of England that detected incoming German aircraft in World War
> II.
> He had worked on the radio detection of thunderstorms (hazardous to
> aviators) during World War I. In 1935 he proposed a method for locating
> aircraft by a radio-pulse technique. The radar system was invaluable to
> the
> defense of Britain during the Battle of Britain in 1940. It operated day
> and
> night over a range of 40 miles, giving the Royal Air Force information
> about
> the height and bearing of German planes.<
>
> That's what he gets credit for, not what he did. He was the Director of
> the Radio Research station at Slough (back in the days when industry was
> supported by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research)when he
> was asked by the Tizard committee to calaculate if a wireless death ray
> was practicable. He got one of his men to do the calculations: the result
> was that it was impossible to generate sufficient power for a death ray,
> but that it should be possible to generate enough  to detect a reflection
> from aircraft. W-W reported this, and so it led to the famous trial with
> the Daventry transmitter of the BBC on 6Mc/s (as it was then) and a
> Heyford bomber. The measurement of distance by using a pulse technique was
> nothing new, having been used back in 1923 by Kennelly and Tuve for
> measuring the height of the ionosphere. His work on thunderstorm location
> was also hardly invnetive, as it used a Bellini-Tosi direction finding
> system (invented 1903) coupled to a CRT instead of a goniometer - and that
> was suggested before W-W used it. R.V.Jones is the not the only one, by
> the way, to have been pretty scathing about Watson-Watt and his ability to
> take credit for other people's work. There was also the occasion when W-W
> asked the Air Chief Marshall how he would like 500 superb airborne radar
> sets: the response was 'I'll settle for ten that work!'
>
> The CH (Chain Home) was a pretty crude system in some ways: it relied on
> switching reflectors in and out of circuit to obtain the general
> direction, and manual goniometers to measure bearing and vertical angle.
> It possibly had a slight military advantage  in that it was a multistatic
> radar, with the receivers in different places to the transmitters, so
> possibly being more difficult to knock out. In many respects, the German
> Freya on 120Mc/s  was a better radar, although the lack of a DC restorer
> in the video circuits made it easy to jam. Where the British system was
> better was the integration of the radar into an air defence system, and
> W-W wasn't the architect of that, either.
>
> Sorry, Kenny, but Watson-Watt wasn't anywhere near as good an inventor as
> he got the credit for.
>
> Peter Chadwick
> Swindon.
> (Radio engineer by profession - if you hadn't guessed!)
>
>
>
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