Classroom clipper, Vol. XVI, No. 5, June 1960

              June 1960
Published by Pan American World Airways
VOL. XVI, No. 5
Aero-Space Embraces Such Matters as Electronic Environmental Testing Also Studies Accomplished on a Drone Test Range
The Aero-Space Age has brought with it a multitude of complications for the engineers who seek to introduce new techniques and make new breakthroughs. Among them:
1. Short wave radio is so useful that many people want to use it for many purposes, with the result that the radio spectrum sometimes gets very crowded.
2. Drones, which are pilotless aircraft controlled in flight by radio impulses from the ground, have to be tested when they are new, or when they are newly equipped with surveillance devices.
Investigation of these problems has been assigned to Pan American as prime contractor, and the Bell Aircraft Avionics Division as subcontractor, by a contract with the Army Signal Corps.
The new project is assigned to the Guided Missiles Range Division of Pan Am which is prime contractor to the Air Force Missile Test Center for the operation and maintenance of the Atlantic Missile Range. Key GMRD personnel will act as the nucleus for the Fort Huachuca project.
Personnel in the Pan Am group is expected to reach 600 at the end of two years when the Company has an option for three years’ additional follow-on work.
The EETF (Electronic Environmental Test Facility) project will see Pan Am and Bell Aircraft teams working to find a solution to the serious problem of radio interference with the operation of Army combat electronic equipment and the acquisition of data in support of surveillance drone (aircraft) testing.
In addition to an operation and maintenance role at the Fort Huachuca project, Pan Am will install, operate, and maintain a test range for Army drone aircraft.
Drones equipped with cameras, television, infra-red and other surveillance devices will be launched from a site near Yuma, Arizona and testflown over a racetrack shaped area some 80 miles long and 40 miles wide. Later testing will include flights along a 275-mile corridor from Yuma to Fort Huachuca. As at the Atlantic Missile Range, all drone
flights will be monitored by cameras, radars and telemetry. Pan Am anticipates establishing and operating approximately eight range tracking stations in the southern Arizona area.
In support of the drone operation, Bell’s Avionics Division will supply telemetry ground stations and drone flight control equipment.
A 2,400-square mile area south of Phoenix is to be used to evaluate existing and potential radio interference which could handicap all kinds of army communications under combat conditions.
Initial phase of the far-reaching program will investigate electronic interference with combat elements up to division level within an army corps. The program could be extended to the army level.
The problem of radio interference has reached gigantic proportions since World War II as electronics has become an increasingly essential part of combat action.
New developments leading to operational equipment for surveillance, drone and missile guidance, communications and electronic counter measures have crowded the available radio spectrum to a point where more
effective utilization is an absolute necessity.
A modern army corps, for example, has between 5,000 to 20,000 transmitters emitting signals intermittently within a 60 by 40 mile area.
This environmental test area will be operated by Pan American with a threefold assignment given Bell’s Avionics Division, specifically to track down the source of interference, submit recommendations for corrective action and initiate procedures to eliminate these conditions in the future.
Army electronic equipment will be installed in trailers and various points throughout the area to simulate combat conditions and the degree of interference will be measured and recorded.
Fort Huachuca will be the brain center of the project and it is here that the information gathered in the field will be analyzed in the Army’s automatic data processing facilities, among the most modern and complete in the world.
Basic terms in the technical vocabulary of the Electronic Age and the scope of Pan Am’s new Electronic Environmental Test Facility assignment include:
(Continued on Page T-3)
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The electronic environmental test facility and drone ranges.
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