LATCC (Mil) and RAF West Drayton

 

the RAF West Drayton gate guardian from Barry Davidson

Rob Martin has sent us a large selection of colour photos of LATCC MIL

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RAF West Drayton and LATCC(mil) were in fact separate entities. West Drayton was the parent unit, but LATCC was separate. A mate of mine was posted in to West Drayton as an AATC but he worked in ADNC(air defence notification centre), this meant he took part in station exercises whereas LATCC(MIL) didn’t.

As an AATC I did 23 years and never served at what we called “area radar”, this term cover LATCC SCATCC and all the other ATCRUs. I did spend two weeks at Drayton in 97 on my ALFENS (Automated Low-Flying Flt-Planning Enquiry & Notification System) instructors course. Richard Elwell

(thanks to Rob Gunn for expanding the ALFENS reference)

LJAO

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D and D

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MASOR

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 RW8 1976

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Touchwire displays

Through they seem dated in 2015, in the 1970s touch wire displays were greeted with enthusiasm as touch sensitive input devices, designed to update the flight plan processing systems that underlie air traffic control systems. FPPS stores, activates, amends, distributes and displays that traffic data to control centres, control towers and to individual controllers at their work stations and control desks. Extracts of FPPS data go to Flow Management Units, airports, airlines even air defence. In NATS, in the 1970s, an ambitious joint civil military area control system was under development that utilised touch wire screens as Electronic Data Display Update Systems (EDDUS). Cancelled by the civil ATC service in the late 70s, EDDUS was implemented in the MASOR at LATCC and can be seen installed on the military work stations in the two photos above.

our thanks to Barry Jones for the following

“The touch wire displays are from FPPS Myriad. The example pictures look like they were from the cancelled CASOR development (EDDUS went down the same sorry route – planned for both civil and military but the civil development was cancelled). In the former case it was because the Myriad platform was lacking the required processor power and memory, in the latter case it was because priorities changed with the advent of the CCF project.
FPPS was originally estimated to involve “15-25 man-years of effort, probably 18”. It came in at over 200 man-years and the civil component had been abandoned. Fortunately for Marconi, the supplier, it was a cost-plus contract!”

and to David Alan Roden

“EDDUS used infra red touch grid input/display devices based on PDP11/23s – aka ESEGs. I was part of the acceptance team at SSL Farnborough and later a software developer for EDDUS at SADO, LATCC.”

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 RW 11 new MASOR Ops Room 1991

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Michael Colvin MP, Fl Lt Alan Nuttall AOPA award to D&D Cell

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Air Marshal Sir Ian Pedder inspects the local ATC Wing at RAF West Drayton – ta for comments to Barry Jones and Richard Elwell

The next few photos date to June 6th 1970 and are of “RAF West Drayton”. Note are the iconic Trim phones in pictures 2 and 3.

John A Baker sent in several comments When stage one mediator took over from stage 1/2. The FIR moved along the corridor (towards the military end), and the Civil & Mil FIR’s were in the same room. Later the FIR moved into an area off the main ops room (behind the CLN sector).

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Probably the ‘low flying cell’

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This shows the FIR room before the civil suites were occupied. Far end is the military FIR. The other boards are the Civil FIR (abt 1971).  Once occupied it had a large sofa on the right hand side. This was ideal for a ‘kip’, rather than taking the long walk to the canteen !

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RW17a  close up of the Mil FIR boards

RW17b RAFAN traffic office 3rd floor, April 1970

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below The next two are the LATCC Club – situated over the canteen.

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rest/reading/quiet/newspaper room

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this is the bar/snooker room

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