Maury Markowitz
From the Great White North!
- Joined
- 27 February 2014
- Messages
- 181
- Reaction score
- 111
I hope this is the right sub-forum...
I'm reading Watching the Skies and I'm confused about one part of the Linesman concept.
The Type 85 makes sense to me. It had a dozen beams, each of which broadcast about 5 MW of power on two mixed frequencies and changed both with every pulse. A jammer would have to sweep the entire 500 MHz bandwidth in order to ensure both of those two would be "hit" in any pulse, thereby greatly diluting its power.
Ok, but then they also built the Type 84. This was a fairly basic system using a single-frequency L-band magnetron of the same power as a single beam in the Type 85. I'm at a loss what the Type 84 added.
Yes, it is at a much different frequency, but the carcinotron could still likely hit it, and if not, a second one would not be an enormous cost if they wanted to defeat the system, and they could likely do it with just another antenna and a switch. Certainly adding a L-band jammer to their aircraft would cost a lot less than adding a Type 84 to every station in the UK.
Is there something about the L-band that makes it better for long-distance detection? Or more resistant to jamming? Or some other reason not related to jamming that explains why they had two radars?
I'm reading Watching the Skies and I'm confused about one part of the Linesman concept.
The Type 85 makes sense to me. It had a dozen beams, each of which broadcast about 5 MW of power on two mixed frequencies and changed both with every pulse. A jammer would have to sweep the entire 500 MHz bandwidth in order to ensure both of those two would be "hit" in any pulse, thereby greatly diluting its power.
Ok, but then they also built the Type 84. This was a fairly basic system using a single-frequency L-band magnetron of the same power as a single beam in the Type 85. I'm at a loss what the Type 84 added.
Yes, it is at a much different frequency, but the carcinotron could still likely hit it, and if not, a second one would not be an enormous cost if they wanted to defeat the system, and they could likely do it with just another antenna and a switch. Certainly adding a L-band jammer to their aircraft would cost a lot less than adding a Type 84 to every station in the UK.
Is there something about the L-band that makes it better for long-distance detection? Or more resistant to jamming? Or some other reason not related to jamming that explains why they had two radars?
