7 May 1982 - a very busy day

Logbook entry: To lee .30 minutes
                         Jammer CTF  .30 minutes
                         Lee to Aberporth  1.20 hour

So after a non- farewell, as we weren't sure what was happening, we set off back to Lee-on-Solent.  When we got to NATIU the engineers ripped out the dashboard dial and fitted a very strange device on the floor between Bob's legs.  Quite simply it was a 'Spectrum Analyser' which you will find on the benches of many laboratories and workshops.   This one came overnight from Holland, as it was the best specification.  Apparently it's delivery is a story in its own right.  However it's job was to analyse the receiver signal and give us an exact picture of it on its small display screen.  Ergonomics and safety were clearly not that important as there were several sharp corners all around Bob's nether regions.  He asked me to be gentle when landing!
As soon as we were airborne on the test flight it became apparent that it was going to do its job.  Although the switches were small and it took several minutes to warm up, once operating it did what it said on the tin.  We could see a nice clear spike which was the missile seeker radar and when we turned on the transmitter we could see both signals and could easily tune one on top of the other.
So time to try it out for real. To do this we needed a missile range and the one we would use was the one at Aberporth off the Welsh coast.  There were already Lynx facilities there as an aircraft was based there doing Sea Skua missile trials.  So at the end of the day we headed off to Aberporth were we would operate for the next two days.

The range site at Aberporth near Cardigan, used for naval missile trials to this day. We operated out of one of the grassy fields.