GCA

[@willowbruce1923]

I used to practice GCA‘s in Ottawa Canada and had to have to use it to approach into Trenton Ontario Canada to CFB Trenton. The controllers didn’t mind the practice when things are quiet and the weather into Trenton was very bad and the GCA was appreciated. Things do get very busy both for the controllers as well as the pilot.

[@chrisjh777]

In the mid 70s, I used to work as a Radar and Radio Technician in the RAAF on similar military GCA (AN/CPN-4), manufactured by Gilfillan Bros. This equipment was manufactured in 1948, the year I was born. This movie brings back good memories. I used to love watching the Magnetron auto tuning mechanism turning to correct frequency drift during Tx warm up. The technology used in 1948 radar was amazing, given that magnetrons were invented only a few years earlier during WW2. The other fascinating thing was the synchonized reciprocating mechanism that moved the side walls of the Azimuth and Elevation Slotted Waveguide Antennae in and out, to modulate the X Band PAR signal causing the scanning motion. Brilliant stuff. Thank you.

[@willgaukler8979]

GCA operator 68/71... some tower ...GCA was great to be close to those machines...we had 30 R, L, C....sitting there right along the active runway ... I was 20 then ...lol...good times... remember ... one mid air collision can ruin your day ...

[@JoeyShao]

Second that to good memories, worked on GRN-19A TACAN set and MPN-11 GCA for ROCAF during mid 80’, quite amazed by those vacuum-tube technologies after my academic semiconductor educations, simply start all over again backwards!

[@johndwayne3481]

Radar technician here. I worked on the MPN-14 , FPN-16, FPN-62, and the GPN-22 PARs. Can’t say I loved PAR, because they keep you very busy.

[@PacoOtis]

Thanks for sharing the video! I'm from the old school and actually taught the GCA approaches at our military rotary wing flight school here in the States. The GCA was all we had in Vietnam and we did many such approaches and the operators were quite dedicated and good.

[@fourfortyroadrunner6701]

U.S. Navy, 68-74, ETR-2, NAS Miramar, GCA RADAR maintenance, we had an FPN-52 (similar to FPN-16) and two QUAD FPN-36 along with training unit for CCA which was a separate outfit

[@publicmail2]

These Canadians got a little crazy with phonetics.

[@jaycee330]

That's what the ICAO recommends. "TOUSAND" "TREE" "FOWA" "FIFE" "NINER" There are languages that don't have the "TH" sound and "hard R", after all.

[@revanc2179]

Time to ace the simulator now

[@dougpoppins3119]

At two tousand feet I taught I taw a putty tat.

[@gomassey12]

Azideia do alek