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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 16th Dec 2019, 2:10 pm   #21
fpmacko
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Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: Annapolis, Maryland, USA.
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

Hello,

I've just stumbled upon this site via a mention of it on the HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment forum on groups.io. This thread especially caught my eye because the VT fuze was developed here at the Johns Hopkins Univ. Applied Physics Laboratory. APL was formed expressly for this purpose, but we've grown in scope since then and now employ over 7,000 here at our research campus near Columbia, Maryland. A few examples of the VT fuze survive and one is on display here. There is also an in-depth film (now digitized) that was produced shortly after the war, which I believe I still have if anyone is interested.

https://www.jhuapl.edu/About/History

best regards,

Frank Mackowick
Principal Professional Staff
JHU/APL
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Old 17th Dec 2019, 1:33 am   #22
John KC0G
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

Frank, welcome to this group.

IIRC, JHU/APL developed the proximity fuzes for shells, ie ordnance which spins at a very high rate. The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) developed the proximity fuzes for fin-guided missiles, eg rockets.
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Old 17th Dec 2019, 7:20 pm   #23
Trevor
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

i would love to see the video i have long held an interest in this technology producing a device like this must have been staggering at the time
Trev
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Old 17th Dec 2019, 9:10 pm   #24
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

I would like to see the video too, perhaps you (Frank) could pop it in a dropbox folder? Ever since I came across these I have been fascinated as just how those valves survived.
 
Old 18th Dec 2019, 9:52 pm   #25
Ed_Dinning
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

Hi Gents, anyone remember if the article on these (several years ago) was in RB, BVWS or Radiophile ?

Ed
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Old 19th Dec 2019, 6:28 am   #26
John KC0G
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

There was a question about proximity fuzes on p. 34 of Radio Bygones, issue No. 49, November 1997. There were follow-up letters in the following issue, No. 50, Christmas 1997, pp. 34-35.

I think that you are looking for the article by Stef Niewiadomski, in Radio Bygones, issue No. 133, Oct/Nov 2011, pp. 26-33. Ref. 6 is for Ralph Baldwin's first book "The Deadly Fuze'. His second book "They never knew what hit them" was published in 1999.

HTH John
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Old 9th Jan 2020, 5:18 pm   #27
fpmacko
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

All,

I must apologize for not following up my message of 16 December. It was a user problem at my end. When I posted that message I didn't see it appear in the thread and I mistakenly assumed the list was no longer active. But I didn't notice that the thread had spilled over to a second page until just this morning when I opened my work laptop after the Christmas break.

I should find some time either this afternoon (Thursday the 9th in Maryland) or Friday to upload the file to a download site. I seem to recall that it's quite large so hopefully it won't blow any size limit.

best regards,

Frank Mackowick
Principal Professional Staff
JHU/APL (semi-retired)
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Old 9th Jan 2020, 11:00 pm   #28
fpmacko
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

Ok, I'm back.

I've uploaded the VT fuze video to my google drive and shared it out. Please let me know if you have any problems playing it. It's kinda big at 1.4 GByte and it appears google are doing some format conversion to reduce its size at the moment so it might not be available immediately. It's a .MOV video reproduction of a silent color film produced by APL near the end of the war. The production values weren't the greatest. (Hey, don'tcha know there's a war on??) The reproduction house that generated the video laid down an audio track of film projector noise just like the old silent movies. The dialog is all done via text and graphics inserted before each scene.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xP...qNHpBLjuu-F6Cu

BTW, this film was produced at APL's only facility at that time, which was a used car dealership in Silver Spring, Maryland. Note the cinder block basement walls in some of the scenes. The lab move to a new research campus in Columbia, Maryland in the early 1950s and we now have over 30 buildings and 7,000 staff. Quite a change from the used car dealership.

I hope you enjoy this. Please let me know if there's anything else you're curious about regarding the VT fuze. I can probably find a lot of releasable documentation on our internal network. Like this stuff...

https://www.jhuapl.edu/Content/image.../1_VT-Fuze.jpg

https://www.jhuapl.edu/Content/techd...-01-Wagner.pdf

https://www.jhuapl.edu/Content/techd...-01-VTfuze.pdf

best regards,

Frank Mackowick / WA3NHK
Principal Professional Staff
JHU/APL (semi-retired)
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Old 12th Jan 2020, 9:10 pm   #29
Radio1950
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Default Re: Anti aircraft proximity fuzes

Very interesting indeed.
Thanks for posting.
Nice to hear from persons directly associated with the history.
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