In the mid 60s we used to joke about how working with radar would make us sterile (some people believed it). I went on to have a family of 5 children (yup admit that nos 2 & 5 were adopted). Other friends in radar all had normal families (3-5 being normal then :-)

The gear we had was ex US. We had range position radar + range & height radar & we had one little gadget called an azimuth radar.

Range on a PPI (Plan Position Indicator) told us what 'vector' the 'hostile' was trascking. RHI (Range & Height Indicator) told us how high & far away the 'hostile' was & the azimuth was a gadget that we could remotely hand rotate to look at the reflections from a particular azimuth.

The nearest story to frying seagulls I know re radar was told to me last month by a friend who is a pilot with Dragonair but who was down in Sydney doing 3 months work for the Australian Navy (whilst on forced leave from Dragonair after the epedimic in HK). The story is heresay but he was a reasonably honest person. He told us how the navy at Garden Island in Sydney have a high powered high focus radar beam & video camera that tracks it. He said that he was having it demoed to him when the camera showed a seagull landing on the mast of one poles near the base. So they lined up the radar beam at it an flicked the burst switch - he says there was a puff of smoke & a few feathers left.

Anyway, we didn't indulge in that kind of activity - our radar was massive ungainly stuff (apart from the azimuth radar unit).

Doug