Vom militarischen Zielfolgeradar zum Vogelradar

摘要

A brief summary shows the history of Swiss-made military tracking radar, used from the late 1960s for research on bird migration, being progressively transformed into a dedicated bird radar over a time of 40 years. Based on this development, three types of bird radars are now available for different tasks: (1) the robust military tracker, equipped with modern receivers and an automatic recording system, which is still the best multi-task radar available (with the capabilities of tracking single targets as well as recording the number and spatial distribution of migrating birds by its pencil-beam fixed at various elevations or conically scanning, the fixed-beam as well as tracking providing echo-signatures); (2) in order to bring the radar into difficult terrain, its essential parts were mounted on a truck, at the cost of losing tracking and scanning capability; (3) the most recent development was the replacement of the old radar by small modern ship radar adapted for pencil-beam surveillance in combination with the well-established automatic recording and analysis equipment; protected against weather by a radome and with the capability of automatic recording and data handling it is now a reasonably cheap array for specific tasks even in remote areas like marine platforms.Data from four sites across Europe show height distributions and migration traffic rates recorded with the new radar. Advantages and limitations of the new method in comparison with other methods are discussed.