Vintage RADAR Secondary Surveillance Radar 1960s Air Traffic Control (transponders, airlines)

RADAR: A detailed technical training film (circa-1960’s) explaining “Secondary Surveillance Radar” which is used to identify aircraft positions from surface to air. Nice quality film with clear explanations of air traffic control's use of radar and transponders. Part One (5 mins) and Part Two (14 mins) both included. In December 1957, the International Civil Aviation Organization, ("ICAO") adopted “Secondary Surveillance Radar” (SSR) for use by Common Civilian and Military Air Traffic Control. The ICAO creates regulations for aviation safety and security, and regulates practices, procedures and standards in the field of aviation. Film shows how SSR works, explains the use and functions of transponders and radar tracking. - Adapted from a rare ICAO training film circa.
Background: Computers began to be utilized in air traffic control starting in 1956 (UNIVAC File Computer and UNIVAC 1218)) and later with the massive IBM 9020 systems. This film predates the IBM 9020 system, but provides great over of how the Secondary Radar systems work.
In 1960, the FAA required the use of Transponders for use with RADAR in identifying aircraft.
Related References:
Air Defense, 2003, article
journals.sagep...
History of Air Traffic Control
www.natca.org/...
www.faa.gov/ab...
vipclubmn.org/a...
mansfield-devi...
www.wired.com/...

[@nbntelevision1]

This leap in technology was the direct result of a mid-air collision in June of 1956 by two commercial airliners over the Grand Canyon. Back then, there were no ARTCC facilities as we would recognize today. Back then, continental traffic was handled by AIRINC with no radar whatsoever. This very system shown in the film is still in use today with very little changes in how it works. More recently ADS-B will likely replace the mode C and mode S transponder, but for now we’re essentially using 1950’s technology to track planes.

[@johncantwell8216]

I guess the midair collision over NYC in 1960 helped to speed things along.

[@DirtyLilHobo]

During the late seventies there was an effort to eliminate the broadband system and replace it with Direct Access Radar Channel due to the high maintenance and ever increasing lack of parts including expertise. DARC would sufficiently be in conjunction with NAS IBM9020 to function like the CDC. The CDC was yet another mainframe whose only job was to write the graphics out on our PVD’s. Our objection was that the weather display on broadband had greater detail as opposed to the L--L H---H weather demarcation on Stage A and DARC. DARC did help in some ways as long as the 9020 was also operational as we could use its code assignments. Strip processing, route processing, PAR’s PDR’s, PDAR’s airway and direct route took a huge load off the controller. Manual strip writing sucked. However, the IBM9020 had to be replaced as it was reaching absolute capacity with CPU usage in the high nineties which meant that several functions like SAR recordings had to be turned off in order to keep the load down before the machine would begin to shut things down on its own and eventually crash. NAS’s all time highest priority was to NEVER lose data. It’s engineered software prioritized functionality so essential data was saved and acted on though certain functions were sacrificed. That main premise was essential to NAS reliability and remained so until after I had retired. The replacement for the IBM9020 was the IBM 3083 which was contained in one third of the floor space and located in an expansion of the basement. The old automation floor was converted to DYSIM and training offices. The 3083 was water cooled and had cassette tapes instead of the old reel tapes. Cassette tapes had a much higher capacity. The entire NAS OS along with all the adapted data was on one cassette. The 3083 also allowed for multiple VM sessions which meant that NAS had its own VM and offline jobs like NTAP, UNTE, and system builds were run at anytime. It also gave us KVDT’s that allowed us to work on future systems in our offices. The next generation processor was the IBM G-3 about the size of a large upright freezer. The G-3 reduced the floor space needed to less than 1/4 of the original IBM 9020’S. TWO G-3 boxes and each contained several CPU chips on an expansion card. If one CPU failed another was brought online by an IBM tech with an initialization tool and code. ATCS & DATA SYSTEMS SPECIALIST ZAB/ZDV (Retired) During the early 2000’s we went to electronic strips, large rectangular color radar displays which put up a large red X from corner to corner indicatiing it was out of service. And, speaking of those new displays, we could draw on those scopes to outline various things like a hot restricted area. So, one day an enterprising confroller drew a red X on the scope, centered it and reduced the range so it duplicated the outage X. The SMMC (System Maintence and Monitoring Console) engineers just went ape over that one position throughout the night switching out consoles, switching PAMS, Startover, and any idea they could come up with to no avail. The red X remained until the day watch showed up to open the sector and easily cleared the display, increased the range, turned around to the engineers and said “So, what wrong?“ They were agast.!! So as I left we were transitioning to yet another system NextGen designed with conflict resolution, ADS-B, reduced vertical separation above FL290, and many features that would indeed reduce the stress on the controller. However, a whole new set of problems arose. They no longer teach manual separation, strip writing, and many of the things we had to utilize in my day....

[@K-Riz314]

Thanks for sharing your stories. I love hearing shop talk and stories from people involved with the earlier days of technology.

[@DirtyLilHobo]

I came into ATC in 1974 and the ARTCC has just transitioned to Stage-A automation with mosaic radar display. Those PVD’s were still capable of being laid flat and go back to using plastic shrimp boats on the screen. It was a real mess when we had high volume of traffic and the machine decided to fail, switch every aircraft over to the appropriate squawk 2100, 2400, etc.. Every radar position had a discriminator box that we could set eight codes to either double slash or single slash. And the machine crashed a-lot.!! During the seventies they took the machine down for maintenance at 2100 and brought it back around 0600.. We didn’t go 24hr until the early eighties. So, that meant broadband all night on the mid-shift. ATCS 1974-2006 ZAB, ZDV (retired)...

[@BrassLock]

No wonder you retired! It must have been nerve-wracking. Did you take up sailing or gliding to discover a way of relaxing?

[@Torreiro]

I'm an air traffic controller of RECIFE Area Control Center! 😁 I'm from Brazil and work for the Brazilian Air Force, here the majority of controllers are military! It's amazing to see how the surveillance systems worked so many years ago and how is today, with ADS-B, CPDLC and much more. I'll share your video with my ATCO friends! Thank you veeeery much for your channel and videos!!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Gabriel, thank you very much for your kind works. Glad you liked the video. I bet your job as an air traffic controller is quite fascinating and requiring of great focus! Keep well. ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@SuburbanDon]

This was a lot more detailed and interesting than I expected.

[@PatrickRosenbalm]

Note: At 12:19 a Boeing 737-100 is shown. That aircraft didn't enter service until 1968. I would have hated to work in there being a non smoker. Pretty interesting!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Patrick, Thanks very much for your observation. Re the 737-100, I assume you are referring to the plastic plane on a string that the instructor is using in his demo. I am not an aircraft guy, but it appears you may be correct. Interesting, good spotting. I own the original 16mm film and original canister. Surprisingly, there is no date to be found anywhere. I am thinking now that most of the film is early or mid 1960’s radar equipment. But still trying to pin down a closer date range. The large image of the Pan Am aircraft at the beginning of the film has the tail number N707PA, if I read it correctly. That was delivered to Pan Am on 15 August 1958. (Boeing 707s were made from 1958 to 1979. Pan Am used 707’s until Jan 3, 1981. ) I don’t know when that aircraft left Pan Am service, but it may be Pan Am stock footage that was used. In fact, some of the radar equipment may be from different years also. Makes dating the film a challenge. Still researching it though. Thanks again for your feedback. Are you an aircraft guy? ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@uploadJ]

I'm thinking that was just a generic 'plastic' aircraft representative of no particular Boeing model, used for demo purposes in an FAA classroom. For instruction purposes to controllers at the FAA, two engines or four engines on the 'model' would not make any difference, and, lessen the possibility of the outer two 'falling off' during handling of the model by the instructor.

[@RetroJack]

Surprised to see that they were using raster-based CRTs instead of vector-based ones.

[@frankowalker4662]

That was great, thank you.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Franko, thank you. This is one of those films that helped me learn a lot during the research portion. Glad you liked it! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@ryanphillips5688]

the good ol days when you could just light one up next to your buddies at work lol

[@The11q11]

what's the range of the PSR??

[@donmoore7785]

"Defruiting" sounds political - lol. This is an awesome piece of history.