Radar Tracking Anomalies over an Arid Interior Basin

摘要

Ground based radars tracked an aircraft flying selected patterns between 1,000 and 4,000 feet over an ephemeral lake (25 miles north of the radars) from September 1963 to February 1964. Approximately 50% of the 83 missions, skin, s-band passive target tracking, and/or c-band active target tracking radars, indicated propagational anomalies. This report discusses the instrumentation, tracking loss characteristics, and attendant meteorological conditions and presents a detailed examination of tracking losses observed on 6 November 1963. This study also indicates that a 10N unit inhomogeneity gradient was formed by a perturbated thermal condition to defocus the tracking radars by multipath propagation. (Author)