January 1946 - ELECTRONICS - RADAR ON 50 CENTIMETERS - The TPS-3 Radar

     This article is a technical overview of the TPS-3.
     The basic system was developed by the Signal Corps at Camp Evans to protect the Panama Canal. Later it was realized this excellent equipment could be modified to provide radar protection for landing beaches. The equipment could be transported in a landing craft and setup in 30 minutes. When one consideres the original Army radar the SCR-271 weighed several tons this is an incredible advance.
    Although not spoken about in this article the radar was adapted to locate enemy mortars to direct counterfire. This little radar would see action in WWII and Korea.
     This was America's first artillery counter-fire system. Overtime this system would be upgraded and redesigned into a completely computer intergrated system known as Firefinder. A system that helped win Desert Storm.

Twenty men and a girl

The Secret Tube that Changed the War - VT-158

Marchetti returns

Contents of this article for quick reference:

Page 98:
   Fig. 1 - Typical setup of the TPS-3 radar
   Fig. 2 - A view of the console and maintenance cable system.

Page 99:
   Fig. 3 - A-scope and PPI-scope patterns.
   General Description

Page 100:
Fig. 4 - Block diagram of the complete TPS-3 radar

Page 101:
   Antenna and Propagation
   Fig. 5 - Determination of reflected energy maxima and minima
   Fig. 6 - Modulator wave forms

Page 102:
Fig. 7 - Free-space patterns for the two TPS-3 radar antenna connections
Fig. 8 - Complete coverage pattern, with the antenna horizontally polarized

Page 103:
   Radio-Frequency System
   Fig. 9 - Tranmission-line capacitance joint
   Fig. 10 - Sketch of the t-r switching system

Page 104:
Acknowledgments

ELECTRONICS
January 1946

By Lt. Col. Harold A. Zahl
and
Major John W. Marchetti
Page 98 - 104

John Marchetti at Camp Evans
building 20 - January 1999

The TPS-3 RADAR

PRIOR TO AMERICA'S entry in the
war, available radar equipment operated on 100 and 200 mc. This equipment had been set up at the Panama Canal, but it was felt that additional measures were necessary to avoid surprise raids by low-flying aircraft against which the existing radars were least effective.
A plan was set up to construct a small number of radar sets which were to be mounted on small boats anchored in the vicinity of the Canal entrances. It was felt that in

these advance locations they would provide a radar screen making surprise raids impossible. After considerable experimentation, it was decided to construct these sets to operate on a frequency of 600 mc and, accordingly, a model was built up of components already developed by the Signal Corps and an installation was made on the motor vessel "Nordic."
Tests of this equipment were so successful that it was immediately apparent that extremely long ranges

By
LT. COL. HAROLD A. ZAHL
Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories,
Bradley Beach, N. J.
and
MAJOR JOHN W. MARCHETTI
AAF Watson Laboratories,
Red Bank, N. J.

and low angle coverage were obtainable in this frequency band even from a set only 15 feet above sea level, and that with the components available a very lightweight medium-warning radar could be constructed. At the request of Col. William Cody and others of the AAF, the Signal Corps was asked to repackage this equipment into a lightweight assault-type radar that could be both air transportable and hand-carried and have a range of well over 100 miles on bombardment aircraft.
To prove that the first laboratory model was air transportable it was flown from Newark Airport to Florida on February 27, 1943, in a B-18 and was set up and operating

98 January 1946 - ELECTRONICS

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ELECTRONICS January 1946

ELECTRONICS
January 1946