The story of EKCO involvement in the above is interesting since it came about as a direct result of an early example of industrial/commerce co-operation between EKCO and Southend Municipal Airport.
The origin of ARAA lies indirectly with the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49 where GCA radar materially contributed to the success of the operation by allowing aircraft to operate in all but the worst conditions (particularly at Gatow and Templelhof airfields in Berlin) and proved that 'talkdown radar' was an invaluable aid to airports.
In November 1946, Squadron Leader Bernard Collins was appointed the manager of Southend Municipal Airport with the (enormous) task of developing the airport into a potential international airport despite having a very limited budget and shortage of materials.
In early 1949, noting the development and use of GCA radar in the Berlin Airlift, Bernard Collins realised that this equipment would be needed at Southend if it was to offer 'all weather' capability, however in 1948, GCA radar was hugely expensive (estimated to be circa £50,000) and by and large only the military and large international airports could afford it.
Daunted by this, Bernard Collins arranged a meeting with EKCO (Local folklore says that Eric Cole was at a luncheon with the Mayor of Southend and Bernard Collins) where the issue of GCA talkdown radar was discussed together with its high price and it was suggested to Eric Cole that surely he (E.K.Cole) could do something cheaper and just as good - being a local company and all that, to which, Eric apparently said 'I'm sure we can'.
The upshot of this was that 'Tony Martin' who by this time was Chief Engineer was tasked by Eric Cole to investigate the feasibility of designing a system, which would provide a talkdown service at a fraction of the cost of the existing systems.
Tony Martin at once realised that all existing GCA systems had been designed and built regardless of cost where radar had grown up in wartime when the military had unlimited money to lavish on it and each improvement was achieved by adding complication meaning that radar had bypassed the "primitive" early stages of its evolution.
Tony Martin therefore sat down with his team of engineers, lead by Ted O'Flynn (a wartime radar engineer with the company who ran a 'special projects' laboratory above the car radio laboratory at Southend) and started to backtrack, trying to design the simple radar that might have been developed in the early days if military money had not been so plentiful. Here the work was made much easier by the fact that at Malmesbury work was well ahead on a radar system for Hawker Hunter Radar Ranging and ASV Mark 19 for the Fairey Gannet.
Tony Martin and Ted O'Flynn along with another engineer John Price assisted by Mike Foggarty and Bernard 'Johnny' Walker established the parameters needed by the airport Air Traffic Controllers through a series of meetings with Bernard Collins (mostly in a pub according to local folklore), these being that the radar must have a means to positively acquire and identify an aircraft (in other words - a means to scan the surrounding sky) at a minimum of 10 miles and a means to accurately talk down the aircraft on a 3 degree glide-path to the Obstacle Clearance Limit height of 250 feet (at 1/2 mile from touch-down) at which time the runway lights should be visible failing which, the aircraft was required to abort the landing and overshoot to either try again or divert to another airfield.
It just happened that the Hawker Hunter Radar Ranging (ARI-5820) system was an almost a perfect match in terms of radar performance since this 'X' band radar could meet the range requirements and had a high 'PRF' which could give the high resolution image needed to bring a 'target' down the glide-path when mated to the 5 inch 'high visibility CRT as used on ASV Mark 19.
All that was needed in terms of the radar performance was to decrease the beam-width to 3 degree's, which was simply done by increasing the antenna dish to 36 inches diameter (which also gave the extra range) and changing both the range marker generator and video output to show the required CRT indicator markers, which were generated by a counting system to show range markers at every 2 miles on the 0-16Nm range and every ½ mile on the 0-4Nm range 'A' scope.
The challenge then was to develop the hardware to suit the needs of a talkdown controller in a control tower and much discussion must have taken place with the controllers in Southend Control Tower via Bernard Collins.
The finished design was a structure, which has been likened to a periscope in a submarine in that the operator stood at a console, which was about 3ft square the front of which had a 5 inch diameter 'A' scope and an illuminated compass above together an illuminated series of lights, which told the approach controller if the aircraft was 'on track', or off to the left or right. Behind the front panel was the equipment rack containing the transmitter/receiver and the waveguide assembly.
