Airways Museum Virtual Tour - ATCARDS Radar Console

This is a photo of a typical late-1980s screen picture of the ATCARDS radar display system. The map shows the Melbourne Control Zone in the centre, with the extended runway centrelines for Tullamarine and Essendon airports within it. The hatch marks in the extended centrelines are at two-mile intervals, and there is a 3NM 'Z' scale marker at the bottom of the picture. Place your cursor over the photo to get pop-up labels identifying various features on the map.

The fineness of the fully-synthetic, stroke-drawn picture can be readliy appreciated, especially if it is compared with the previous Bright Display system. In the picture above, solid lines generally represent air routes and dashed lines either Control Area steps or radar terrain clearance steps. Radio navigation aids are marked by crosses, visual terrain reference points are shown as triangles and local airfields are shown as small circles.

Primary radar returns were indicated by a small cross and SSR returns by a circle. A series of small dots provided a history trail of selectable length. For aircraft 'planned' into the system, a label was automatically attached to a track squawking the appropriate transponder code. Labels comprised three lines of data:

(Photo: CAHS collection)

Airways Museum Virtual Tour

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ATCARDS Radar Console Display

This is a photo of a typical late-1980s screen picture of the ATCARDS radar display system. The map shows the Melbourne Control Zone in the centre, with the extended runway centrelines for Tullamarine and Essendon airports within it. The hatch marks in the extended centrelines are at two-mile intervals, and there is a 3NM 'Z' scale marker at the bottom of the picture. Place your cursor over the photo to get pop-up labels identifying various features on the map. The fineness of the fully-synthetic, stroke-drawn picture can be readliy appreciated, especially if it is compared with the previous Bright Display system. In the picture above, solid lines generally represent air routes and dashed lines either Control Area steps or radar terrain clearance steps. Radio navigation aids are marked by crosses, visual terrain reference points are shown as triangles and local airfields are shown as small circles. Primary radar returns were indicated by a small cross and SSR returns by a circle. A series of small dots provided a history trail of selectable length. For aircraft 'planned' into the system, a label was automatically attached to a track squawking the appropriate transponder code. Labels comprised three lines of data: top line - aircraft identity (callsign) and weight category if Light or Heavy (Medium not displayed) middle line - Mode C altitude in hundreds of feet, ground speed in knots bottom line - a field in which miscellaneous information could be entered by controllers (Photo: CAHS collection) Airways Museum Virtual Tour NEXT PREVIOUS If this page appears without menu bars at top and left, click here