Re: Name that doodad, greeble, keg of beer, or whatever.

In a message dated 5/12/99 10:50:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
thomas.anderson@university-college.oxford.ac.uk writes:

<< > Ndege Diamond wrote:
 > 
 > > The thing is that they both have a thing on the front that looks
like a
 > > 55 gallon oil drum.  ... The big question is what could they
possibly be?
 > 
 > Why, it's obviously part of the grav-field generator! 
 
 nonsense! my good man, you are clearly thinking of the late-series BAT
F5
 armoured reconaissance vehicles, which did indeed use a laterally
mounted
 preventral field coil housing. this was because the F5s, being rather
 light, were unable to provide enough damping to allow the coil to
operate
 smoothly in the 44 GHz range. thus, a heteromodal external field unit
was
 added to allow this band to be employed.
 
 the device which LFC diamond is puzzled over is the Type 1415
Intermediate
 Altitude Holographic Maser Imaging Array (IAHMI), deployed on both the
 FWA06 SPG and the FWT42 SPAA. the Type 1415 is a compact, robust sensor
 system developed by Philips for sale to mass-market arms integrators
and
 subsequently adopted as a cheap improvement to a range of armoured
 vehicles built by BAT.
 
 the Type IAHMI is a high-resolution short-range radar, capable of
 producing virtual holographic images suitable for analysis by any
normal
 vector signal processor, such as you might find in an armoured vehicle,
 missile or one of the cheaper types of microwave oven. the device is
 cylindrical to accomodate the multiple concentric masing tubes, which
 employ a Holt relay, where each tube feeds the tube inside it, to
produce
 very short pulses of coherent microwave radiation. a constant beam of
 maser energy is produced either end, and it is here that active-field
 emitters are used to split the beams, one being directed into the
target
 area, and the other retained for use as a reference beam in
constructing
 the hologram.
 
 in the case of the FWA06, the Type 1415 is used primarly to track
outgoing
 rounds in the vicinity of the element, so that the fire-control system
can
 judge the wear on the gun barrel and the alignment of the firing
 receptacle (the FWA06 uses the notoriously wobbly PF-4H howitzer
 mechanism, and is only rescued from mediocrity by the excellent Intel
 TapStar smart rounds). with the aid of this information, the FCS is
able
 to compensate for material defects in the gun and so achieve better
 performance.
 
 the FWT42 uses the Type 1415 in its more obvious role, as an instrument
 for directing anti-missile fire. the capability to track all visible
 objects in the target area, subject only to processing limitations,
makes
 it the ideal choice for this task, as not only can a potentially large
 number of inbound warheads be tracked, but it is possible to identify
and
 discriminate between the various penetration aids (decoys, chaff, etc)
 which modern missiles deploy in flight. furthermore, IAHMI devices are
 able to track the stream of rounds fired by the vehicle's own cannons:
the
 FWT42 uses this information to make rapid and tiny corrections to the
 orientation of the Moulinex K440 autocannon system it carries, thus
 optimising the stream's trajectory and improving interception time by
as
 much as 5%.
 
 so there.
 
 Tom
  >>

You people have too much time on your hands....<sigh> David McElhannon