http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQED4C2VJfk

youtube vidio of birth of radar

last day for gb75rdf today 9/3/2010 by m0dol chris

WE  WILL BE AT THE MARCONI BOROUGH HILL BBC RADIO SITE IN DAVENTRY NORTHAMPTONSHIRE IO92HE WAB SP56 WHERE THERE WERE ALSO EXPERMENTS DONE FOR THE DAVENTRY PROJECT AS IT WAS CALLED THIS WAS THE SITE WHERE THEY TRANSMITTED ON 49MTRS

 THE LOCATION OF THE MEMORIAL FOR THE BIRTH OF RADAR IN FEB 1935 JUST OF THE A5 NEAR WEEDON NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ENGLAND IO92LE WAB SP55

BY SIR ROBERT WATSON WATT AND ARNOLD WILKINS OBE

WE WILL BE IN THE AREA WHERE THE FIRST RADAR WAS DISCOVERED ON 26TH FEB 1935 THIS PROJECT WAS TOP SECRET AND ONLY A FEW PEOPLE KNOW IT WAS BEING UNDERTAKEN

The initial demonstration was to take place on Tuesday, 26 February 1935, just 13 days after the meeting at Farnborough, which indicates the urgency with which The Air Ministry was treating the matter. The RAF loaned a Handley Page Heyford bomber (K6902) for the experiment to act as a 'target' to be tracked.

The Heyford was a slow and lumbering aircraft which, having first flown in 1930, was already some years out of date by 1935. As an aircraft design it was remarkable for few reasons, perhaps the most obvious of which was it was only capable of a maximum speed of 142 mph; it was also the last heavy bomber of the biplane design to serve with the RAF. For the purposes of the test however, with a wing span of 75 feet, it did provide quite a large object to 'aim at' in the sky.

The test was to be carried out in a field outside the little town of Weedon,IO92LE IN NORTHAMPTON LANE LITCHBOROUGH [ WELSH LANE] near Daventry. The Heyford was instructed to fly on a path between Weedon and the MARCONI BBC transmitter at Daventry. The detection equipment used consisted of a rather large receiver which was fitted with one of the early oscilloscopes, all of which had come from the laboratory at National Physical Laboratory, and tuned to the 49-meter wavelength that the BBC transmitter worked on.

The equipment was loaded into the back of a small six wheel morris van and driven on the evening of Monday, 25 February 1935, to the field, where Arnold Wilkins and an assistant prepared, in the cold and the dark, for the test the next day.

The pilot of the Heyford, Flight Lieutenant R. S. Blucke, took off from Farnborough the next morning, and climbed to 6,000 feet and started to fly the course on his flight plan.

In the morris van Arnold Wilkins and his assistant tuned their radio receiver to the frequency of the BBC transmitter at Daventry. As the Heyford bomber flew overhead, the steady signal of the transmitter which was being received and displayed on the oscilloscope, began to move up and down, indicating that a measurable amount of radio energy was being reflected from the aircraft above.

The Air Ministry men in the van watched as the signal indicated the aircraft in their vicinity, they were able to track it for nearly five minutes (which corresponded to a range of approximately eight miles). The experiment was a complete success and had proved conclusively that detection of aircraft with radio means was possible.

From that first test, an initial sum of £10,000 was granted to continue the work, staff were drawn from the people at the Radio Research Station and these included Watson-Watt and Wilkins of course. Radio Detection Finding (RDF) as it was known, was immediately shrouded in the highest level of secrecy - Radar, had been discovered.