tiabunna's photos with the keyword: radar

Copied from an old 1965 slide. This WF2 (WF short for Wind Finding) radar was in a suburb of Melbourne not far from Essendon Airport. It was used to train people such as me and had a range of 200km. I find myself thinking how inappropriate it would now be considered to have such a potentially dangerous beast so close to houses, with just a fence (seen best viewed large) between. In the PiP, a weather balloon launched from the same site, with (from the top) the 350gm balloon, a parachute, the radar reflector and the radiosonde to send back atmospheric data. Happy Fence Friday and have a good weekend, everyone.

This would have been the Longreach weatther office. Like most such field offices I'm fairly sure it now is deserted and automated, though the Dines Anemometer still is there at right. In the foreground (that dish mounted on a turret) an old WF2 wind-finding radar, as I used to operate long ago. It's now very much a museum piece. Behind, to the left, is the current Longreach weather radar, you can see its current output here. Footnote: If you'd like to see the current Longreach weather, click the little box at lower right in the "map features" section of the radar page. The red number is temperature, blue is wind speed. Reposted to wish everyone a HFF and a great weekend.

From an old slide. Mawson was one of the last major Australian observing stations to receive a wind-finding radar. This is a WF2 with a range of about 200km, being installed in its protective radome in February 1967.

From an old slide. View southwards down the "main street", past a hexagonal storage hut from the earliest days of the ANARE Station, then the Met office and balloon shed, with the newly installed WF2 radar to the left and the main bulk of the island beyond. There was a forest of large radio masts to give VHF communications. Most of all, one of the regular drops of snow - the weather here today reminded me that winter is again coming. If you wish to see a "live" view of this area, the Australian Antarctic Division has a webcam viewable at www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/macquarie-island .

From an old slide. This was taken just moments after my previous shot. As I commented, successfully launching the large balloon, radiosonde (the white box for sending temperatures) and large radar reflector (the funny mesh thing in the middle) was tricky on windy days such as this one: note the relative angles of the balloon, pulling hard, its payload, and the horizon.

From an old slide. This was some years before ozone depletion was recognised, but scientists wanted more data on seasonal changes to temperatures in the high stratosphere. We had a supply of special high altitude balloons for launching on set dates, but on windy days it was a tricky process and required lots of coordination for two people to successfully get the balloon, radiosonde (temperature sender) and large radar target away.

"Rachel" was the name given to the ancient (WW2 vintage) AA3 Mk VII anti-aircraft radar that had been used to track weather balloons at Macquarie Island since (I think) 1953. She lived in a small hut, to give some weather protection, with a radome above. One of our first tasks was to dismantle the hut and decommission her, to be replaced with a new WF2 radar.

Scanned from an old slide taken inside the fibreglass dome, hence the red cast. The old WW2-vintage radar we removed had automatic target tracking: this new one was fully manual. That's progress! But the WF2 could follow the weather balloons for about two hundred kilometers. On a windy day at Macquarie Island, the balloons often did not rise more than ten degrees above the horizon before disappearing in the distance, even though they climbed at about 300 metres/minute ...