Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Big Fred and Small Fred

Quite some time ago, more than a year, I did a bit of minor conversion work and I turned out a SNAR-10, NATO reporting name Big Fred:
and a PRP-3, Small Fred:
(In this photo, the radar dish is at the rear of the turret and folded down flat in the traveling position). I 
did this simply because O8 didn't make them. However, this past month, Marcin very kindly obliged and produced some. I bought a few and I've now dug out my converted ones and replaced them with Marcin's:

Big Fred (SNAR-10) is a battlefield surveillance radar used for finding and tracking stationary and moving targets, such as convoys, rocket or tube artillery, and even individual armored vehicles. The radar is sensitive enough that it can even see bursts of artillery shells and so can be used to correct the fall of shot from friendly batteries. Big Fred is effective to a range of about 12.5 miles (20km). 

Small Fred (PRP-3) is an artillery counter-battery radar, again with an effective range of about 12.5 miles, used to locate enemy artillery and mortars. It is also used to direct the fire of friendly artillery. The PRP-3 has been superseded by PRP-4 which mounts a more advanced radar, Tall Mike:
It's the contraption at the back of the turret that looks like a plastic patio chair. It's on a telescoping pole that extends upward out of the rear part of the turret and it's retracted for traveling. 

That's it for this mid-week post. More from me this weekend.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting post. I had no idea there were such radar sets that could track ground movements! Thanks for posting this. Any chance of some group shots of your East Germans and assorted? ;)

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  2. Big Fred is actually sensitive enough that it can track small groups of soldiers on foot. I'll be happy to put together a group shot for you. Keep watching my posts and I'll get it on here shortly

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  3. Hi. Do you know whic is its frequency band, peack power (transmited power), the antenna polarization, the type of the antenna scan (circular, in sector or elicoidal), on what type on chassis it is mounted or if it has frequency agility?
    Thank you!

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    1. Long long ago, when I was in the army, I had all those specifications at hand. But that's been more than 25 years ago. Now all that I can remember to tell you for sure is that it is mounted on a MT-LB and the actual radar designation was 1RL127, which was a two dimensional pulse Doppler type, though it has since received a complete radar package update.

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