RRH Staxton Wold
Remote Radar Head Staxton Wold or RRH Staxton Wold is an air defence radar station operated by the Royal Air Force, located near Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England. As it has been a radar site continuously since 1939, it has a claim to be the oldest working radar station in the world. History The present-day site of RRH Staxton Wold has had an early warning function since the 3rd century AD, when it was the site of a warning beacon. It was first selected to be used as a radar station in 1937, when it was set up as part of the Chain Home system, being some above sea level and only inland of the Yorkshire Coast. Building work did not begin until December 1938 as delays in procuring the site occurred when the landowners resisted selling (this being before the Second World War, so the government found it harder to demand the land by force for the war effort). The site became fully operational in April 1939 and is the only one of the original stations still in use, and may th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Scarborough () is a seaside town in the Borough of Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England. Scarborough is located on the North Sea coastline. Historic counties of England, Historically in the North Riding of Yorkshire, the town lies between 10 and 230 feet (3–70 m) above sea level, from the harbour rising steeply north and west towards limestone cliffs. The older part of the town lies around the harbour and is protected by a rocky headland. With a population of 61,749, Scarborough is the largest seaside resort, holiday resort on the Yorkshire Coast and largest seaside town in North Yorkshire. The town has fishing and service industries, including a growing digital and creative economy, as well as being a tourist destination. Residents of the town are known as Scarborians. History Origins The town was reportedly founded around 966 AD as by Thorgils Skarthi, a Viking raider, though there is no archaeological evidence to support these claims, made during the 1960s, as p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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RAF Church Fenton
Royal Air Force Church Fenton or RAF Church Fenton was a former Royal Air Force (RAF) station located south east of Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England and north west of Selby, North Yorkshire, near the village of Church Fenton. The station was opened in 1937 and during the Second World War was home to air defence aircraft, a role retained by the station until the 1960s when it became a training station. It closed in 2013 and is now a civilian airfield known as Leeds East Airport. History Prewar Plans for a new airfield adjacent to the village of Church Fenton were announced in June 1935, it was subject to protest from the local population particularly concerning the waste of valuable farming land and was close to an existing airfield away at Sherburn. Despite the protests construction started in early 1936 on the site, a mixture of private and West Riding County Council-owned farm land. On 1 April 1937 the station was declared open and on 19 April the first station c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Radar Stations
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the objects. Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the objects and return to the receiver, giving information about the objects' locations and speeds. Radar was developed secretly for military use by several countries in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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NATO Integrated Air Defense System
The NATO Integrated Air Defense System (short: NATINADS) is a command and control network combining radars and other facilities spread throughout the NATO alliance's air defence forces. It formed in the mid-1950s and became operational in 1962 as NADGE. It has been constantly upgraded since its formation, notably with the integration of Airborne Early Warning aircraft in the 1970s. The United Kingdom maintained its own network, but was fully integrated with the network since the introduction of the Linesman/Mediator network in the 1970s. Similarly, the German network maintained an independent nature through GEADGE. Development Development was approved by the NATO Military Committee in December 1955. The system was to be based on four air defense regions (ADRs) coordinated by SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe). Starting from 1956 early warning coverage was extended across Western Europe using 18 radar stations. This part of the system was completed by 1962. Linked to existin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Royal Air Force Stations
The Royal Air Force (RAF) operates several stations throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. This includes front-line and training air bases, support, administrative and training stations with no flying activity, unmanned airfields used for training, intelligence gathering stations and an early warning radar network. The list also includes RAF stations operated by the United States Visiting Forces, former RAF stations now operated by defence contractor QinetiQ on behalf the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and air weapons ranges operated by the MOD. Overseas, the RAF operates airfields at four Permanent Joint Operating Bases (PJOBs) which are located in British Overseas Territories. RAF stations and MOD airfields in the UK Royal Air Force RAF front-line operations are centred on seven main operating bases (MOBs): * RAF Coningsby, RAF Marham and RAF Lossiemouth (Air Combat) * RAF Waddington ( Combat Intelligence, Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) * RAF ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Linesman/Mediator
Linesman/Mediator was a dual-purpose civil and military radar network in the United Kingdom between the 1960s and 1984. The military side (Linesman) was replaced by the Improved United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment (IUKADGE), while the civilian side (Mediator) became the modern public-private National Air Traffic Services (NATS). In the 1950s, the Royal Air Force was installing a radar network known as ROTOR using war-era radars like Chain Home along with new command centres. A new radar, the AMES Type 80, replaced all of the ROTOR radars and command centres with a series of nine Master Control Radars and a number of associated secondary radars. While these installations were in progress in the early 1950s, Compagnie générale de la télégraphie sans fil, CSF introduced the carcinotron, which could output a radio signal at any desired frequency. This made it a very effective Radar jamming and deception, jamming system, and it appeared to render ground-based radars li ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Improved United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment
The Improved United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment, normally shortened to either UKADGE or IUKADGE, was the Royal Air Force's (RAF) ground-controlled interception system covering the British Isles during the 1990s. It consisted of a number of ground-based radar sites, links to airborne early warning aircraft and Royal Navy ships, a telecommunications system to send digital data and voice communications on a protected network, and processing systems based on VAX-11/780 computers. The network ultimately contained a dozen long-range radars including four Marconi Martello, two General Electric TPS-592, and six Plessey AR-320. UKADGE was developed in response to concerns about its predecessor, Linesman/Mediator. Linesman started in the 1950s, when it was assumed that any air attack on the UK would be by hydrogen bomb so no effort was made to "harden" the radars or its main control centre as such effort would be futile. By the mid-1960s, with the Soviet Union reaching strategic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eric Eastwood (engineer)
Sir Eric Eastwood CBE FRS, (12 March 1910 – 1981) was a British scientist and engineer who helped develop radar technology during World War II. Early years Eastwood was educated at Oldham High School and then attended Manchester University studying under Lawrence Bragg. Following graduation he began research in Spectroscopy at Christ's College, Cambridge, with C. P. Snow as his supervisor, gaining a PhD in 1935. He taught physics at the Liverpool Collegiate School for a while. RAF career Eastwood joined the Royal Air Force, and attained the rank of Squadron Leader. He worked throughout the war on the technical issues related to radar and its uses by the Fighter Defences. Postwar career Following the end of the war, he was recruited to English Electric Company by his former supervisor at Cambridge, C. P. Snow. Initially he worked at the Nelson Research Laboratory working on synchrotron generators high-voltage impulse X ray tubes. After the English Electric Company acquired th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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RAF Saxa Vord
Remote Radar Head Saxa Vord or RRH Saxa Vord (aka RAF Saxa Vord), is a Royal Air Force radar station located on the island of Unst, the most northern of the Shetland Islands in Scotland. As of July 2019 it is once more a fully operational radar station, after closure in 2006. The station's motto ''Praemoneo de Periculis'' ('Premonition of Peril') reflects its role. RAF Saxa Vord is further north than Saint Petersburg in Russia, and on the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska. The station was named after Saxa Vord, which is the highest hill on Unst at . It holds the unofficial British record for wind speed, which in 1992 was recorded at — just before the measuring equipment blew away. History Early years The island of Unst has played an important part in the defence of the UK since the outbreak of the Second World War. By 1945, there were two radar sites on the island – one on Saxa Vord hill, and the other at Skaw on the east coast. This latter is the older, being built in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bernard Lovell
Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (31 August 19136 August 2012) was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980. Early life and education Lovell was born at Oldland Common, Bristol in 1913, the son of local tradesman and Methodist preacher Gilbert Lovell (1881-1956) and Emily Laura, née Adams. Gilbert Lovell was an "authority on the Bible" and, having "studied English literature and grammar", was still "bombarding his son with complaints on points of grammar, punctuation and method of speaking" when Lovell was in his forties. Lovell's childhood hobbies and interests included cricket and music, mainly the piano. He had a Methodist upbringing and attended Kingswood Grammar School. Career and research Lovell studied physics at the University of Bristol obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1934, and a PhD in 1936 for his work on the electrical conductivity of thin films. At this time, he also receive ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire is the largest ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county (lieutenancy area) in England, covering an area of . Around 40% of the county is covered by National parks of the United Kingdom, national parks, including most of the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. It is one of four counties in England to hold the name Yorkshire; the three other counties are the East Riding of Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. North Yorkshire may also refer to a non-metropolitan county, which covers most of the ceremonial county's area () and population (a mid-2016 estimate by the Office for National Statistics, ONS of 602,300), and is administered by North Yorkshire County Council. The non-metropolitan county does not include four areas of the ceremonial county: the City of York, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and the southern part of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, which are all administered by Unitary authorities of England, unitary authorities. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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RAF Danby Beacon
Royal Air Force Danby Beacon or more simply RAF Danby Beacon was an early warning radar Royal Air Force station that formed part of the Chain Home network of radar (or Radio Direction Finding (RDF)) stations built by the Royal Air Force immediately prior to the Second World War. Construction The receiving masts were high timber structures and the transmitting masts were steel masts. The construction of these masts was the work of the RAF controlled, but civilian staffed, No. 2 Installation Unit of No. 1 Maintenance Unit RAF (1 MU). Second World War During the first part of the war the station was under the control of 13 Group of RAF Fighter Command. On 3 February 1940 it was a plot from Danby that led Hawker Hurricane aircraft from Blue section, 43 Squadron stationed at RAF Acklington to shoot down a Heinkel He 111 bomber over Whitby. This was the first German aircraft shot down over England during the war, the British aircraft being under the command of (then) Flight Lie ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |