Radar and birds

I worked as a radar technician and then radar instructor on contract to the Army at Fort Sill from 1956 until 1958 when we lost the contract to another contractor. We taught the MPQ-10 counter-mortar radar to the Army troops. The Q-10 radar was introduced during the Korean War and used in Korea.

One time a news photographer/reporter came into our shop storming about our radar. He had gotten out of his car across the street from the shop and had a pocket full of flashbulbs. He had walked into the beam of the radar and the bulbs had gone gone off in his pocket. He was demanding that the Army owed him a new package of flashbulbs and a new jacket, because the pocket was burned some also. A Master Sergeant, in charge of the shop, took him to the officer in charge. I never heard if he collected or not.

We played around with lining up the radar on birds that would light on the electric lines across the street. If we aligned the radar correctly on a group of birds, the birds would begin to feel the heat from the radar waves. They would first flutter their wings, then move over a few inches. By realigning the radar on the birds, we could keep them moving along the wire. After moving a few feet, the birds would finally fly off.

After RCA lost the contract at Fort Sill, I was transferred to Grand Bahama Island on the Eastern Test Range. I stayed there two years before moving back into Florida as a technical writer.

While on GBI, I worked at a high-powered tracking radar the last six months. There were buzzards all over GBI. We discovered that we could actually lock on and track a buzzard with the radar. When we would start tracking a buzzard, the buzzard would shortly begin moving erratically and finally begin flying straight away from the radar. The further they would get from the radar, the less heat they would feel from the radar waves. We would lose track when they got about a mile from the radar.

Radar waves are the same waves used in a microwave oven for cooking. If the birds we played around with had stayed in the radar waves long enough, they would have been cooked.