VERLORT Radar

The VERLORT radar at Muchea:
Photo - ???

The VERy LOng Range Tracking (VERLORT) radar was an extended-range version of the SCR-584which was often credited as "the radar that won WW II". The Verlort range was increased from 650 Km to 4000 Km and the dish diameter from 1.8 m to 3 m to give the radar space tracking capabilities. The Red Lake (Woomera) Mercury tracking station used the more accurate AN/FPS-16 radar previously installed at Woomera for otherspace activities.

The VERLORT radar reinstalled at Carnarvon just beside the AcqAid antennas:
Photo - Alan Gilham

The Verlort radar performed reliably for the six Mercury orbital missions. It was then relocated to the new Gemini tracking station at Carnarvon as an acquisition aid and back-up for the even more accurate FPQ-6 radar installed there.

Although the Verlort was kept operational for the first few Carnarvon missions it was soon removed from the operational list because the FPQ-6 proved very reliable and other acquisition methods were entirely sufficient.

Some technical descriptions

Helical scan mechanism: Image – ‘Electronics’; Fig 2, Dec ’45, p.104

The SCR family of radars, developed at the MIT laboratories, was remarkable for the innovative MIT solutions to radar operations now met in modern radars using electronic methods.

The Verlort Plan Position Indicator (PPI) was driven by a mechanical computer once target acquisition occurred with the radar operator needing to keep a ‘hairline’ indicator manually centred on the target’s echo to maintain track.

Even more intriguing were the target acquisition techniques. For targets where only crude position information was available, a helical scan was used to acquire. The dish was swung in a circle at 6 rpm along the expected path with the reflector tilted to and fro about 4 deg per dish revolution to create a helical spiral about 20 deg wide along the expected track path.

A conical scan beam: Image – ‘Electronics’; Fig 1, Nov ’45, p.104

Nutating antenna dipole feed:
Image – ‘Electronics’; Fig 5, Dec ’45, p.107

For a detailed technical description of the SCR-584 radar published in the November & December 1945 issues of ‘Electronics’ magazine refer to http://www.hamhud.net/darts/scr584.html.