Weather Radar Was Designed For War

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30610, 28 November 1964, Page 26

Weather Radar Was Designed For War

The commissioning of new meteorological radar equipaent at Harewood this week ecalled New Zealand’s earliest work in this field, as the gear replaced was lesigned, developed, and built largely in Christchurch during the Second World War.

New Zealand was asked to design radar (then new) for use by American forces in the Pacific area. In 1942 the Radio Development Laboratory of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in Wellington (under Mr C. Watson-Munro, i now professor of physics at Sydney University) and a similar laboratory in Christchurch (under Mr T. R. Pollard, now director of the Canterbury University Industrial development department) co-operated. Mr Pollard said yesterday that these radar sets were to ascertain the height of Japanese aircraft. The slant range was traced by a very narrow beam and the elevation angle then calculated. Wellington produced the Island Shoot More than 850 goats were shot in eight days on Whale Island, off the coast at Whakatane, by a party of four field officers from the wildlife division of the Department of Internal Affairs, Rotorua. Mr A. G. Hall, senior field officer at Rotorua, said the goats had been stripping the vegetation. Mr Hall and his party laid poison for the many- rats on the island.— (PA.) now 57,030.

radio equipment and Christchurch the actual structures and electronic control apparatus. These sets were among the most advanced at the time.

First trials were made at Kaituna in 1943. This unit was moved to Whenuapai in 1944 for further trails with aircraft and meteorological balloons. Four sets were made and, after the war they were used for meteorological work, Mr Pollard said. No. 1 continued at Whenuapai until this year, No. 2 operated at Nandi (Fiji) from 1948, No. 3 at Invercargill from 1951, and No. 4 at Harewood from 1953, when it was used also for the London-Christchurch air race. “No. 1 was used for 20 years and No. 4 for 11 years, not a bad performance for apparatus made under difficult conditions in pioneering times,” said Mr Pollard. “They were discarded because spare parts of the old type could not be obtained and because equipment has improved so much.”

Two Christchurch men associated with the design of the structures were Mr W. Young, who went to the atomic project at Chalk river, Canada, and is now in radio engineering in Boston, and Mr W. Seldon, who is now a senior engineer in the industrial development department.

Mr Pollard said the retirement of the old Harewood radar coincided with the visit to New Zealand of Sir Frederick White who started radar work at Canterbury University College in 1940.