proudly we hail from New York City where the American stage begins here is another program of the cast of outstanding players public service time has been made available by this station for your Air Force to bring you this story as proudly we hail the personnel of the Air Research and Development Command and particularly the men and the women of the Air Force Cambridge Research Center our story today is called Threading the Needle and it's the story of technical sergeant Tom Giddings and airman second-class Janet Bell and a project they worked on called Volscan we'll hear about this in just one moment but first many times a man is skilled in a particular job yet he's unable to find a use for it has this happened to you are you a service veteran with a service gain skill that's just going to waste well if you are the new lesson because you may be able to put that skill to work as a member of the United States Air Force the Air Force needs experience and know-how game in all the armed forces if you possess one of the critical skills needed to keep America's air defense strong you can put that experience to work in the Air Force and do so at a higher grade and with higher pay than you may realize for full details you rider visit your Air Force recruiter ask for the prior service man's folder this folder will show you why today and tomorrow you're better off in the United States Air Force the serious side of this story is based on the problem of air traffic which is not a simple one I had that demonstrated to me a few years ago when I visited the Ableton Air Force Base I was in the traffic control center trying to find out from the air controller just what went on there it was a busy place and even with the help of the operators explanation it seemed pretty complicated you see the planes call in their positions and they're plotted on radar and then I have to tell them the course they should follow to avoid a mix-up with another plane tell them what direction altitude and speed they should travel but for instance that flip on the radar scope right there now that's 7 2 9 0 1 it just called in that it was in the holding pattern at live oak intersection at 7,000 feet so then so then I answer like so Air Force 7 2 9 0 1 this is Appleton radio have you in the holding pattern live oak intersection 7,000 expected approach time at 45 let's a scary him for a minute but you seem to need several hands and heads what's that blip there well he hasn't called in yet but I'll be hearing from him ending oh here he is now but he says he's Air Force 8 4 8 1 5 over Storyville at 21 and that's 21 past the hour to you altitude 5,000 feet so it with them what happened you'll see Air Force 8 4 8 1 5 this is Appleton radio have you spotted over Storyville at 5,000 remain in holding pattern until further advise we're stacked up 12 deep here see it you just have to keep track of every plane by radar and radio until it lands or is turned over to the tower at the intended landing field it sounds simple when you say it is simple most of the time if the ceiling and visibility is good you know maybe you'd like to listen to this Appleton radio calling Appleton radio this is Air Force jet 9 8 4 0 7 leading F80 blue flight request permission to land over Air Force jet 9 8 4 0 7 this is Appleton radio go ahead Appleton this is Air Force jet 9 8 4 0 7 blue flight is four planes destination Peterborough running to low on fuel now over live oak intersection at 10,000 this is going to cause complications why four more planes that's more than that those f80s are jets shooting stars they can't be stacked the way the other planes are besides which they're low on fuel you see they'll have to be brought in now and the others will just have to wait longer Air Force jet 9 8 4 0 7 Appleton radio have you plotted now Appleton radio this is Air Force jet 9 8 4 0 7 leading blue flight request immediate landing instructions Air Force jet 9 8 4 0 7 Appleton radio we're stacked up here but we'll clear a space for you at once turn west to a 2 7 0 degree heading start let down now at 1,000 feet a minute call upon reaching 8 5 and 3,000 out that's the way it was a few years ago that's the way it is now in many places the aviation industry and particularly the Air Force was faced with a crisis there were too many planes in the air and there wasn't room for them all when they started to come in for a landing in Washington the problem was talked over the meeting of the air navigation and development board this is a group that was established a few years ago to develop a common civil military system of air navigation and air traffic control reading from the minutes of the meeting a military representative said I think it's our problem a military one our planes fly faster we fly in groups so we have many planes wanting to land at the same time a civilian representative said our civilian planes are slower and can be scheduled more easily but even so they arrive from many different points and there are logically popular hours of arrival in departure which crowd the landing areas a military representative said unlike ground traffic we have to keep moving we can't stand still we can't park and wait a civilian representative said there may be as many as 25,000 planes in the air over the United States on any one day and every plane that goes up comes down and there are more aircraft in the air every day and a larger percentage of these planes are jet-propelled there was the problem for everyone to see it was talked about thought about worried over various plans and ideas were considered finally the problem was turned over to the air research and development command they were told there it is do something about and that's how it was me technical sergeant Tom Giddings United States Air Force made a dope by a bad name channel it's just like yeah the same story all the time except for my dolly must be something wrong with her she's just got eyes for me I guess that takes care of that you can't get them like that anymore nowadays so from now on I am staying away from Dan how are you gonna do that well for one thing I'm being sent to this research laboratory as an instructor and there won't be any women around I'm gonna keep busy and I won't have anything to do with them where are you going from Boston they told me yeah that is Cambridge good I'll be seeing you around I'll be at West over you'd better explain it to me as though I didn't know anything about it which is close enough to the truth I know that you men here at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center have been working on a method for scheduling a large number of planes so they can be brought in for landing in a hurry I've got to write a radio script on the development major Andrews you promised to help me out all right the present system for bringing in planes using radar and radio equipment is still based on human abilities and capabilities a skilled team of manual operators with cool heads and lots of experience is able to direct the landing of about 40 aircraft an hour for a short time and that isn't enough so we've come to the conclusion that the bottleneck is to be found in the human factor the limit of the normal brain to take in and act on large amounts of information quickly and without fatigue if the brain is the problem then our brain should be able to solve the problem and we think we can do it by using electronic calculators to do a lot of the work well that certainly seems sensible the whole idea you see is based on locating the planes in the air keeping track of their position and calculating their course and speed electronically in such a way that the planes can be directed safely and quickly to the landing and we think we're getting the problem licked and if you can do what you say without too much change in the present procedures I should think you're on the right road our system which we call volescan is designed to use the regular air traffic control radar an slant cpm-18 this shows on a radar scope the positions of all the aircraft in the area an operator using a specially designed instrument that we call a volescan light gun isolates each radar blip representing a plane the burden is then taken up by the and track unit an analog channel tracking device which transmits its information to date act the instrument which continually computes the planes present and future paths so as to bring it to our screen without interference I think I follow you so far but well how will the rest of it work I mean once you have all this information worked out then there are several possibilities the planes heading can be transmitted to the plane by relay man by our voice radio or automatically by data link to show on the plane zero reader if the plane is so equipped or it can be fed through a coupler directly into the planes autopilot now let's see suppose a number of planes are approaching for a landing from one direction and some other planes have already been given their instructions now won't there be a duplication in paths no no once the blip is singled out by the light gun it in effect puts a fence around that plane until the plane has reached an entry gate and track keeps track of it until then when the channel is cleared and track knows it the whole system is devised so that each plane that is shot by the light gun is automatically assigned to the first vacant channel as part of the project we're prepared to train inexperienced people to demonstrate the simplicity of Volscan's operation the training will be under the supervision of the sergeant whom you were with this morning technical sergeant Giddings oh I was told I'd find my training class in here this is room 132 oh that's where I was told to be oh you must be sergeant Giddings then mm-hmm well I'm in the right place where's a class well if you're sergeant Giddings I guess I'm the class oh all right class we have our work cut out for us we better get to it what's the matter did you expect a larger class my other ones are larger I'm a sergeant Giddings as you seem to know Tom getting airman second-class Bell reporting sir Janet Bell no not another Janet mm-hmm well now as you probably know we are here to learn about the operation of Volscan which is a new development designed to enable a large number of aircraft to be scheduled for landing safely and in a short time now what do you know about traffic scheduling control well practically nothing I think I must have been chosen to be your pupil sergeant to see if you could teach me because if you could teach me you could teach anyone or anyone could learn you know if you'd said you knew all about it I'd be apt to argue with you and show you that you didn't but since you tell me you're ignorant and hint that you're stupid I'll just have to prove to you that you're wrong negative type aren't you no not necessarily it's just that well I've been in the air force for several years now and I've learned a thing or two in that time and if there's one thing I've learned it's this they do a lot of things I can understand at the time but later I find out that they had a good reason for well I hope you find a good reason for this time well I imagine I will but before we start there is one thing we have to get straight now you seem to be my only pupil for this class which means I'll be seeing a lot of you every day I guess now it doesn't mean anything I mean it's strictly in the line of duty this is just business all business oh of course I might say the same thing to you we'll probably get to know each other pretty well but that doesn't mean we have to see each other went off duty remember I'm in the air force just as you are as a career well that's good that's good you sound sensible now let's see what we can learn about operating this thing so there I am I come into this room where I'm supposed to teach and there is my first class for the PPI one airman second class but Frank do you know what they've done to me now they've made you an instructor I would guess but who is it I'm instructing a gal of all things I've got to teach her how to run some electronic gadgets is she pretty smart oh well she's smart enough and there's no nonsense about her I'll say that which does seem sort of strange because she is pretty that is if you like him sort of blonde and streamlined and all that and to top it off her name is Janet oh you're in a rut boy yeah you can say that again grace it's fascinating just because you don't like anything to do with electricity but listen I've only got three minutes on this call no no it isn't a man that isn't why I haven't been to see you with yeah there are a lot of men here but they're all interested in their work on duty well that's the trouble with them there's one though he's my teacher he's sort of cute I've got to show him how wrong he is about girls particularly those named Janet no no I'm not going to get him with my girlish charms I'm going to get him strictly on his own terms by being strictly business it'll take a while but he'll come around in the end you are listening to proudly we hail and our second act curtain in just one moment here's important news for all ex-servicemen you may be qualified to enlist in the United States Air Force at a higher grade and with higher pay than you realize the Air Force needs men who are experienced in critical skills required to keep America's air defense strong if you have training in these skills then the Air Force wants you and they'll put you right on the job so for full details you ride or visit your nearest Air Force recruiter right away ask them for the folder for prior servicemen today and tomorrow you're better off in the United States Air Force all right then let's go into the theory of it once more now what are you supposed to do and how and why I watched the plane or rather the blips on the monitor then I use the Volscan light gun and shoot each blips separately that selects one track for each one on and track I can have seven tracks being watched over at once by one and track unit but after seven it won't take any more so I have to switch to the next and track unit and what happens if you try to assign more than seven tracks at once to and track well it just won't accept them I get signal that it's full and switch to the next one but as soon as any one plane gets to the entry gate its channel is released and I can assign another plane to it that's right then what happens and track follows the plane works at its position and feeds the information to day-tack which computes the ratio between the plane's speed and course and the speed and course the plane should have so it'll reach the landing field at the proper time oh to delay the plane's arrival the plane has swung farther away so it'll take longer listen Tom I know the theory of and track and day-tack but I don't know how that light gun works wouldn't be better if I did know no you're right you probably would be able to do a better job you see the light gun isn't really a gun it's just shaped like one but it doesn't shoot anything now when you want to assign tracking gate to an aircraft you point the gun barrel at the blip on your scope and the blip shows brightly for only the smallest fraction of a second once every four seconds and this momentary flash of light passes down the barrel strikes a photocell in the butt of the gun animating the photocell to generate a pulse of electricity which is amplified and applied to an anthrax now this puts a fence you see around the blip representing the plane and causes anthrax to start following the plane do you follow me well more or less now this action for all practical purposes is instantaneous everything has moved at the speed of light and electricity so the anthrax unit receives a picture of the plane's position as represented by the blip and centers the gate on the target now the next time the blip appears anthrax measures the error between the center of the gate and the blip and continues doing this remembering these errors for 20 seconds or so the electronic circuit memorizes a voltage that represents the plane speed if the speed of the blip and the gate coincide the error drops to zero and the gate stays centered on the moving blip every time it appears see that's the way anthrax tracks or follows the aircraft as it moves across the sky by the blips that move across the PPI scope well thank you I don't know if I understand it better but I should you're certainly very patient oh not really you're a much quicker student than a lot of the kids in my other classes all that malarkey you tossed me when we first started was just that malarkey oh no it wasn't I meant everything I said oh come on you tried to let on you were a little slow or dumb or something you're not oh what did you think I was talking about it oh oh the other whoa that was the way you wanted it I wanted it you were laying down the rules oh now look don't get me wrong there's a lesson over for today yes thank you goodbye tomorrow tomorrow morning tomorrow morning we're through with the theory tomorrow you start with a plane Roger you will be landing to the north on runway 4 heading 330 degrees start letting down 1000 feet per minute maintain airspeed while descending 1,000 feet a minute Roger reading 340 you should be passing through 4,000 heading 345 maintain airspeed you should be passing through 3,000 heading 350 heading 350 3000 it is heading zero continue on course still descending heading zero heading zero 2000 2000 heading zero begin leveling perform cockpit check now leveling now here going down now heading zero cleared to frequency for landing instructions out no I could follow every step of that on my scope it's thrilling no more than that it works and the sort one day after day landing after landing with one plane and with many checking testing making sure there weren't any bugs to be removed from the system rechecking and retesting so that the performance became semi-automatic you know maybe there's something wrong with me but I find this just as exciting as I did the first time I wish we could test it on something bigger oh what do you want a b-52 no silly I mean well for a long time we tested with one single plane then with two and then four now we know we can make this work for large number of planes look Janet we can't recommend this for operational use until we've tried it so often we know it will work every time but we seem to be doing it under laboratory conditions we try it under all the conditions we can think of I know I know we're trying all different conditions but these are conditions that somebody has planned I like to see it just once when we have to add lift wait let's leave well enough alone jet 590804 do you read me Air Force jet 590804 this is Westover Tower read you loud and clear Westover Air Force jet 590804 request permission to land flight mission consists of 10 planes this is Westover Tower we're all here Force jet 590804 identified tower Air Force jet 590804 now approximately 80 miles north your station heading 190 speed 310 knots altitude 18,000 Roger Air Force jet 590804 how's your fuel supply tower Air Force jet 590804 have fuel for another hour we have 10 planes on a test flight originally scheduled for lowering and main stopover bad weather there and we were advised to try now now suggested your base to refuel and wait for the weather to clear Air Force jet 590804 this is Westover Tower we're far from BFR it'd be more than ours wait to sneak an even one plane here much less 10 that suggests your contact field at Fort Dawes near Boston Harbor we've got a new traffic control system they're called Vole scan maybe they can take you jet 590804 calling Fort Dawes do you read me over Tom what's that we're not expecting Air Force jet 590804 this is Fort Dawes read you loud and clear over Fort Dawes this is Air Force jet 590804 request permission to land had alternate landing instructions for Westover who suggested your field and said you had a new method of traffic control now can I take in anyone without special equipment Air Force jet 590804 this is Fort Dawes using Vole scan automatic control we'll bring you in you need no special equipment it's all here on the ground locate Fort Dawes this is Air Force jet 590804 and F-86 at 20,000 feet approximately 60 miles west of your station heading 080 speed 260 knots mission is composed of 10 planes Air Force jet 590804 this is Vole scan automatic control have you in radar contact now throughout landing operation you will be red one repeat red one change radio to secondary one and call in if no answer return to this primary frequency over red one going to secondary one hello Vole scan this is red one on secondary one do you read me over hello red one read you five square how do you read me over read you loud and clear Vole scan what now red one hold heading and maintain two six zero knots we will bring you in the other planes to the entry gate as though we were on GCA at the entry gate at approximately 2,000 feet and two miles from the runway will turn you over to GCA for final approach and landing instructions as we're socked in over there's maybe a different approach than you have made before we'll be landing to the east on runway eight instructions will reach you and the other planes in your mission periodically normally you need not acknowledge all messages but as this is your first landing with Vole scan you will acknowledge you and your planes will be scheduled into the entry gate at approximately 30 second intervals so you should all be on the ground within five minutes of each other over red one right heading one zero zero there will be pauses between instructions to you during red one continue right to one six five degrees level off at 2,000 feet for cockpit check and slow to final approach speed red one heading now one seven five red one should be leveling at 2,000 perform cockpit check now check gear down and lock acknowledge please over red one heading now one eight zero red one now one eight five red one back to final heading one eight zero degrees change to GCA secondary five and call in for final approach control out glad to have you read one that's the last one over the fan came in exactly 30 seconds apart it was four and a half minutes between the time the first and last plane landed well you wanted to see how this worked under different conditions honey now you know it works it does I aim my little light gun at each blip it you kissed me you're a smart girl you could tell right away well it does work doesn't it yeah hey you didn't aim that light gun of yours and me did you I did not I didn't think I'd have to use electronics to bring you in well you didn't nothing as fancy as that just plain old-fashioned magic the feminine kind well that's my story about horse a vastly a significant development of your United States Air Force to make flying safer for everyone and about a young man and young woman who were privileged to share in its beginning if you're an ex-serviceman experienced in critical skills needed to keep America's air defense strong then you're in luck if you possess one of the skills the Air Force needs you may be qualified in the United States Air Force and in a gray that'll be a real pleasant surprise for complete details ride or visit your Air Force recruiter ask for the special prior service man's folder see what a return to the service as an airman can mean to you today and tomorrow you're better off in the United States Air Force this has been another program on proudly we hail present a transcribed in cooperation with this radio station proudly we hail is produced by the recruiting publicity center in New York for the United States Air Force and this is Dick Herbert speaking inviting you to tune in the same station next week for another interesting story on proudly 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