When I received the email from our Secretary Colin Fletcher regarding articles for the next Newsletter it reminded me of the BBC realising unless they documented the stories of those that were in World War II, they would be lost in time. We are not talking about war stories here but the history of the The Marconi Company at Communications, Radar, Marine and the boffins at Baddow.
When the word Marconi is mentioned we tend to think of the man himself and the events at that time, however there have been some remarkable projects since that time which I believe should not be lost in time.
There are two projects out of the many that I believe were major achievements. The first is Jindalee Over the Horizon Radar Network (JORN) in Australia that both sites worked on In the early nineties. Australia needed to cover thousands of miles for their defence and over the horizon radar appeared to be the best option. However this was state of the art technology and there were only a few countries with the experience: Russia, the USA and the UK, and thanks to Ken Perry and Ted Sissons they chose the UK.
It should be noted that if it was required today it would not involve the UK. A massive project involving thirty-six amplifiers and hundreds of receivers. There must be some veterans who can provide the detail .
The other outstanding project was the digitisation of the UK Radar defence systems, which are still operational today.