Word: radar
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...Flight 182 left Los Angeles at 8:30 a.m., flying southward along the Pacific, tracked first by radar controllers at Los Angeles, then by similar Federal Aviation Administration controllers at Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego. A couple of miles after the PSA plane turned east over Mission Bay, the controllers at Miramar passed control to the Lindbergh tower. The tower assigned Runway 27 for landing. That would require the 727 to continue eastward, flying parallel to the runway, then turn south and finally back toward the west for the touchdown...
...safety equipment he must have can cost as much as or more than his plane. At the biggest airports this now includes updated two-way radio equipment capable of handling more than 360 channels (typical cost: $2,000); a transponder, which automatically enlarges the small plane's radar blip on a controller's screen ($1,500); an encoding altimeter, which projects the craft's altitude on the radarscope ($3,500). Even some private pilots concede that special training for those wishing to enter the high-pressure "bird cages" around major airports should be required. But the problem...
Instead the ancient Douglas headed north over the Gulf of Mexico, flying through the night with no approved flight plan or warning lights and maintaining radio silence. Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) picked it up on radar as it flew low into dense fog over Louisiana. The foreign invaders might have escaped detection altogether but for the fact that their plane lost power and crash-landed in the trees near Farmerville, just south of the Arkansas-Louisiana border...
...fact that a plane as large as a DC-7 can penetrate the U.S. from the south totally undetected by military air-defense systems. Concedes NORAD's Del Kindschi: "The defense is not ironclad. It's possible for a single low-flying aircraft to fly under our radar capabilities." NORAD is developing an "over-the-horizon" radar with greater capability for spotting low planes but, for general operational use, the system may be years away. Radar beamed from sophisticated AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes is already highly effective at detecting ground-hugging aircraft. But it would...
...astronomers had turned their wartime technology to the peaceful pursuit of stargazing. Rockets equipped with X-ray detectors roared off the pad. Soaring high above the atmosphere, which prevents celestial X rays from reaching the earth, they enabled astronomers to begin charting X-ray sources in the heavens. Old radar antennas were converted into sensitive radio telescopes, making it possible for scientists to listen to more of the sky's puzzling beeps, squeals and hums. Some of this noise came from so-called radio galaxies that were all but invisible in the mirrors and lenses of ordinary optical telescopes. Other...