CH and CHL radar systems

Heroes Remember

CH and CHL radar systems

Transcript

Basically there were two kinds as I understand it then. There were the big CH stations, that means Chain High and they had 350 foot towers that they had their antenna systems on, aerials, great big things and the huge transmitting equipment and huge receivers. The two transmitters and receivers would half fill this room, I think, something like the early computers. Later development was called the CHL - Chain Home Low and they were low looking things working on quite a bit higher frequency and the antenna systems were in frames. They had four stacks and four bays, that is four columns and then four rows this way total of sixteen antennas which were, I think they were one and a half meters or something, two hundred megacycles. So for those days that was very short wave work. And I was sent to a big radar station, this was radar, of course, that we were talking about all the time, on the Isle of White, a place called Ventnor and this was at one of the big, what they call CH stations, very high towers, one of the earliest ones that was built, huge things. And this was where we got our first sort of on the job training while we were waiting to get into the radar school which was in Yatesbury.

Description

Mr. Beall compares the two radar systems that the British used, CH for long range and CHL for lower level detection. He mentions his posting to a CH station on the Isle of Wight.

Herbert Beall

Herbert Beall was born in 1908 in Ottawa, Ontario. He attended Lisgard Collegiate, where he commanded the 94th Cadet Battalion, and also joined the Governor-General's Footguards. He entered the Canadian Officer Training Corps at university, and received his commission in 1931. In 1932, Mr. Beall joined the Royal Canadian Signal Corps. In February, 1941 he transferred to the RCAF as a Flying Officer with the rank of Lieutenant. His service in England saw him at radar stations in the Orkney Islands and the Isle of Wight. He later went to the Middle East, where he set up and maintained portable radar systems in Egypt, and to a lesser extent Kuwait and Jordan.

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