Peter Copland Works in Meteorological Electronics (continued)

Another problem with the WF3 radar was, I think, the fact that we were trying to run it on our little 2.5 kW generators; solid, but not stable enough. Later, the power supply regulator units in the radar were replaced with improved results. However, the construction of the radar control unit was such that it was almost impossible to remove some of these power supply units.

I think it was in 1973 that we installed the ex-Darwin WF3 radar at its present resting place, in 1998, at Tennant Creek airport which, in those days, was probably the 'ultimate' in Bureau offices. The office itself was in a small closed-in verandah on the side of the 50 year old timber DCA Flight Service Unit (FSU) building. It was so narrow that all the instruments and the table had to be all on one side, or no way past. The balloon filling shed was a steel frame, one car kit-garage with the bolts holding the roof sheeting protruding 30 mm inwards from the frame. It was only about two metres high, and had no sprinkler system. Gas storage was in the open sun next to the filling shed, and later, in a trailer. There was a similar shed for targets and stores two metres away.

The WF3 radar sat on a concrete slab perhaps forty metres from the sheds, with the instrument enclosure in between, but to one side. With now permanent installation, the tent was replaced with white fibre glass panels and an air-conditioner. The air-conditioner was external and did not work well at first. There was an adaptor on the front of the air-conditioner to the flexible ducts connecting with the radar hut, but there was no baffle between the cold and hot return air inside the adaptor. It worked ok; kept itself quite cool. When this was fixed and the inside of the fibre glass panels were insulated with Coolite the radar was just habitable on a summer afternoon, or a winter night.

The original method for the servo alignment did not work too well; after a fair bit of experiment Jack and I had to rewrite the procedure to get some sense out of it. Another problem with Tennant Creek was that there were no good permanent echoes. Heaps of echoes from the hills around, but nothing that the radar liked that would stop it wandering off to find something better. Some years later an old timber mines site office was moved to next to the DCA office. The meteorological office there was a vast improvement. The Observers refused to use hydrogen in the unsuitable filling shed so for the next ten years or so balloons were helium filled. The extra cost of the gas would probably have paid for the filling shed that was eventually built.

Bureau of Meteorology