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Items from Kenneth W. Bahr

The following items were sent by Kenneth W. Bahr, 25108 Sand Springs Rd, Athens, AL. 35613 - May 2012

  1. Development Of Antiaircraft Capability see Note #3
  2. Part Of Western Electric "Blue Book"
  3. Site Location and Shipping Guide No. 210-3
    1. 1969 September
    2. 1973 January
  4. Introduction to Trip Reports
    1. Installation of Herc S2S Trial Kit of System 1013 - May 1966
    2. 1) Korea S2S test success - 1972,
      2) Field Acceptance Test of AN/TSSQ-51 - Oct 1966
      3) Cloudcroft Errant S2S - Feb 1976
      4) LOPAR Magnetron Life - May 1976
    3. Errant-ASP-1984
    4. Surface to Surface, validation of change - April 1976
    5. Technical Support of Hercules Surface-to-Surface Hardware Changes - May 1976
  5. Nike Hercules - Allied Supportability Program - from Western Electric - The 1974 digital conversion of Nike Hercules. please see Note #1 below - Note #2

Notes:

  1. About reliability of Nike components provided in Nike Hercules - Allied Supportability Program :
    My experience with the Nike Ajax ( predecessor to the Hercules) indicates that the system reliability was MUCH MUCH better than indicated in this document. With the indicated reliability, the Nike Hercules would have been down A LOT for emergency repair, a maintenance nightmare.
    - For example, the indicated Mean Time Before Failure ( MTBF ) of the Plan Position Indicator (PPI) scope was 905 hours. There are two of these units per Ajax and most Hercules systems. Assuming the system is ON 100 hours per week, ( our experience ) the figures indicate we should have expected one PPI failure every 5 weeks. I remember only one failure in two years ( 100 weeks ). Twenty times better than the figures in the document. Admittedly our system was new - but I suspect those figures were genereated to help sell the new digital system to the government.
    - Just the opposite of the wildly silly figures provided by NASA to try to sell the SPACE SHUTTLE project to the us (and the government).

    I am appalled by the level of lying Western Electric marketeers did in this document - and the confidence that they wouldn't get into trouble -

    Not that going digital wasn't a great improvement and very cool ;-))

  2. An interesting part of the digital conversion was the conversion to digital of the tracking antenna angle transmission to the computer. Digital devices called "Angle Encoders" generated digital elevation and azmuth signals to the computer.
    - These pulses were transmitted to the RC van in the original analog coaxial cables - as per Kenneth Bahr.

  3. The effectiveness of guns against aircraft is a source of great argument. How many thousand rounds fired against air craft at what altitude? - evasive maneuvers or not? ... radar jamming? ... types and effectiveness of fuzes? ...