"What's a gyrocopter?" (DHS chief)

I'll link to ABC News. ^ | 4-16-2015 | Fishtank

[fishtank]

"What's a gyrocopter?" quote of the day.

[Dark Wing]

>>The autogyro was used to calibrate the coastal radar
>>stations during and after the Battle of Britain.

I have read a great deal about the Battle of Britain and that is a new one for me.

[SandRat]

Have you read the book about the making of the movie Battle Of Britain?

[Dark Wing]

I have a 1980-ish IEEE book on radar up through 1945, and Louis Brown’s “Technical and Military Imperatives — A Radar History f WW2” but confess that I missed that one.

[Covenantor]

I recall seeing a short clip on youtube of an autogyro being launched from a WWII German sub

[Dark Wing]

I appears that bit of information is in a lot of Gyrocopter/autogyro histories, but not _RADAR_ histories.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro

http://www.global-gyro.com/Gyrocopter/History

http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/02/autogyro.html

[Dark Wing]

That was the Nazi Autogyro-kite.

This from one of the links I posted above —

“Autogyros in 1940. No.529 RAF Squadron at RAF Halton were also equipped Avro Rota Mk1s to be used to assist the new Secret Radar Sites to calibrate their equipment. The were instructed to fly out to a known distance and height. The Radar operators could then use their position to tune their equipment to make it more accurate at spotting enemy bombers and fighter approaching the South Coast of England during the Battle of Britain.”

[SandRat]

Don’t feel bad. It’s more about the SPITZ and Gerry air battle and using Vets from both side to re-ceate the real thing for the movie,