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97-578: Hughes Aircraft was founded to build Hughes' H-1 Racer world speed record aircraft, and it later modified other aircraft for his transcontinental and global circumnavigation speed record flights. The company relocated to Culver City, California , in 1940 and began manufacturing aircraft parts as a subcontractor. Hughes attempted to mold it into a major military aircraft manufacturer during World War II . However, its early military projects ended in failure, with millions of dollars in U.S. government funds expended but only three aircraft actually built, resulting in

194-470: A fractal surface, such as rocks or soil, and are used by navigation radars. A radar beam follows a linear path in vacuum but follows a somewhat curved path in atmosphere due to variation in the refractive index of air, which is called the radar horizon . Even when the beam is emitted parallel to the ground, the beam rises above the ground as the curvature of the Earth sinks below the horizon. Furthermore,

291-403: A receiver and processor to determine properties of the objects. Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the objects and return to the receiver, giving information about the objects' locations and speeds. Radar was developed secretly for military use by several countries in the period before and during World War II . A key development was the cavity magnetron in

388-424: A transmitter that emits radio waves known as radar signals in predetermined directions. When these signals contact an object they are usually reflected or scattered in many directions, although some of them will be absorbed and penetrate into the target. Radar signals are reflected especially well by materials of considerable electrical conductivity —such as most metals, seawater , and wet ground. This makes

485-594: A 1953 accounting maneuver designed to reduce his income tax liabilities, Howard Hughes donated most of Hughes Aircraft's stock and assets to a charity he created, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and subsequently ceased managing the company directly. Hughes retained a small cadre of engineers under his personal control as the Hughes Tool Company Aircraft Division , which initially operated from

582-458: A Hughes lawyer claimed they had the right to set up an "executive committee" to take over the running of the HHMI and its Hughes Aircraft subsidiary. The Attorney General of Delaware Richard R. Wier challenged this and filed suit in 1978. Charles M. Oberly continued the action when he became attorney general in 1983. Oberly stated he wished to see an independent board of trustees to ensure both that

679-482: A different dielectric constant or diamagnetic constant from the first, the waves will reflect or scatter from the boundary between the materials. This means that a solid object in air or in a vacuum , or a significant change in atomic density between the object and what is surrounding it, will usually scatter radar (radio) waves from its surface. This is particularly true for electrically conductive materials such as metal and carbon fibre, making radar well-suited to

776-540: A full radar system, that he called a telemobiloscope . It operated on a 50 cm wavelength and the pulsed radar signal was created via a spark-gap. His system already used the classic antenna setup of horn antenna with parabolic reflector and was presented to German military officials in practical tests in Cologne and Rotterdam harbour but was rejected. In 1915, Robert Watson-Watt used radio technology to provide advance warning of thunderstorms to airmen and during

873-400: A highly publicized U.S. Senate investigation into alleged mismanagement. The U.S. military consequently hesitated to award new aircraft contracts to Hughes Aircraft, prompting new management in the late 1940s to instead pursue contracts for fire-control systems and guided missiles , which were new technologies. The company soon became a highly profitable industry leader in these fields. In

970-491: A list in April 1984. In January 1985 the new board of trustees of the HHMI announced they would sell Hughes Aircraft either by private sale or public stock offering. On June 5, 1985, General Motors was announced as the winner of a secretive five-month sealed-bid auction. Other bidders included Ford Motor Company and Boeing . The purchase was completed on December 20, 1985, for an estimated $ 5.2 billion, $ 2.7 billion in cash and

1067-749: A physics instructor at the Imperial Russian Navy school in Kronstadt , developed an apparatus using a coherer tube for detecting distant lightning strikes. The next year, he added a spark-gap transmitter . In 1897, while testing this equipment for communicating between two ships in the Baltic Sea , he took note of an interference beat caused by the passage of a third vessel. In his report, Popov wrote that this phenomenon might be used for detecting objects, but he did nothing more with this observation. The German inventor Christian Hülsmeyer

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1164-498: A proposal for further intensive research on radio-echo signals from moving targets to take place at NRL, where Taylor and Young were based at the time. Similarly, in the UK, L. S. Alder took out a secret provisional patent for Naval radar in 1928. W.A.S. Butement and P. E. Pollard developed a breadboard test unit, operating at 50 cm (600 MHz) and using pulsed modulation which gave successful laboratory results. In January 1931,

1261-732: A pulsed system, and the first such elementary apparatus was demonstrated in December 1934 by the American Robert M. Page , working at the Naval Research Laboratory . The following year, the United States Army successfully tested a primitive surface-to-surface radar to aim coastal battery searchlights at night. This design was followed by a pulsed system demonstrated in May 1935 by Rudolf Kühnhold and

1358-442: A rescue. For similar reasons, objects intended to avoid detection will not have inside corners or surfaces and edges perpendicular to likely detection directions, which leads to "odd" looking stealth aircraft . These precautions do not totally eliminate reflection because of diffraction , especially at longer wavelengths. Half wavelength long wires or strips of conducting material, such as chaff , are very reflective but do not direct

1455-677: A system might do, Wilkins recalled the earlier report about aircraft causing radio interference. This revelation led to the Daventry Experiment of 26 February 1935, using a powerful BBC shortwave transmitter as the source and their GPO receiver setup in a field while a bomber flew around the site. When the plane was clearly detected, Hugh Dowding , the Air Member for Supply and Research , was very impressed with their system's potential and funds were immediately provided for further operational development. Watson-Watt's team patented

1552-514: A wide region and direct fighter aircraft towards targets. Marine radars are used to measure the bearing and distance of ships to prevent collision with other ships, to navigate, and to fix their position at sea when within range of shore or other fixed references such as islands, buoys, and lightships. In port or in harbour, vessel traffic service radar systems are used to monitor and regulate ship movements in busy waters. Meteorologists use radar to monitor precipitation and wind. It has become

1649-907: A writeup on the apparatus was entered in the Inventions Book maintained by the Royal Engineers. This is the first official record in Great Britain of the technology that was used in coastal defence and was incorporated into Chain Home as Chain Home (low) . Before the Second World War , researchers in the United Kingdom, France , Germany , Italy , Japan , the Netherlands , the Soviet Union , and

1746-514: Is a racing aircraft built by Hughes Aircraft in 1935. Using different wings, it set both a world airspeed record and a transcontinental speed record across the United States. The H-1 Racer was the last aircraft built by a private individual to set the world speed record; most aircraft to hold the record since have been military designs. During his work on his 1930 movie Hell's Angels , Howard Hughes employed Glenn Odekirk to maintain

1843-452: Is a simplification for transmission in a vacuum without interference. The propagation factor accounts for the effects of multipath and shadowing and depends on the details of the environment. In a real-world situation, pathloss effects are also considered. Frequency shift is caused by motion that changes the number of wavelengths between the reflector and the radar. This can degrade or enhance radar performance depending upon how it affects

1940-451: Is as follows, where F D {\displaystyle F_{D}} is Doppler frequency, F T {\displaystyle F_{T}} is transmit frequency, V R {\displaystyle V_{R}} is radial velocity, and C {\displaystyle C} is the speed of light: Passive radar is applicable to electronic countermeasures and radio astronomy as follows: Only

2037-567: Is intended. Radar relies on its own transmissions rather than light from the Sun or the Moon, or from electromagnetic waves emitted by the target objects themselves, such as infrared radiation (heat). This process of directing artificial radio waves towards objects is called illumination , although radio waves are invisible to the human eye as well as optical cameras. If electromagnetic waves travelling through one material meet another material, having

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2134-417: Is the range. This yields: This shows that the received power declines as the fourth power of the range, which means that the received power from distant targets is relatively very small. Additional filtering and pulse integration modifies the radar equation slightly for pulse-Doppler radar performance , which can be used to increase detection range and reduce transmit power. The equation above with F = 1

2231-544: The Galileo probe that flew to Jupiter in the 1990s. The company built nearly 40 percent of commercial satellites in service worldwide in 2000. In 1947, Howard Hughes redirected Hughes Aircraft's efforts from airplanes to helicopters . The effort began in earnest in 1948, when helicopter manufacturer Kellett Aircraft Co. sold its latest design to Hughes for production. The XH-17 "Sky Crane" first flew in October 1952, but

2328-466: The Aerospace Group . Two Hughes engineers, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge , had new ideas on the packaging of electronics to make complete fire control systems . Their MA-1 system combined signals from the aircraft's radar with a digital computer to automatically guide the interceptor aircraft into the proper position for firing missiles. At the same time other teams were working with

2425-486: The California Institute of Technology wind tunnel, revealing a speed potential of 365 mph (587 km/h). Streamlining was a paramount design criterion, resulting in what has been retroactively described as "one of the cleanest and most elegant aircraft designs ever built." Many groundbreaking technologies were developed during construction, including individually machined flush rivets that left

2522-666: The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 , without offering any arguments for that being the case other than "Hughes showed them how it should be done." After the war, Hughes claimed that "it was quite apparent to everyone that the Mitsubishi A6M Zero had been copied from the Hughes H-1 Racer." He claimed the wing shape, tail design and general similarity of the Zero were derived from his racer. Jiro Horikoshi , designer of

2619-628: The Nyquist frequency , since the returned frequency otherwise cannot be distinguished from shifting of a harmonic frequency above or below, thus requiring: Or when substituting with F D {\displaystyle F_{D}} : As an example, a Doppler weather radar with a pulse rate of 2 kHz and transmit frequency of 1 GHz can reliably measure weather speed up to at most 150 m/s (340 mph), thus cannot reliably determine radial velocity of aircraft moving 1,000 m/s (2,200 mph). In all electromagnetic radiation ,

2716-717: The RAF's Pathfinder . The information provided by radar includes the bearing and range (and therefore position) of the object from the radar scanner. It is thus used in many different fields where the need for such positioning is crucial. The first use of radar was for military purposes: to locate air, ground and sea targets. This evolved in the civilian field into applications for aircraft, ships, and automobiles. In aviation , aircraft can be equipped with radar devices that warn of aircraft or other obstacles in or approaching their path, display weather information, and give accurate altitude readings. The first commercial device fitted to aircraft

2813-831: The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation , later to join Thompson Products to form the Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge based in Canoga Park , with Hughes leasing space for nuclear research programs (present day West Hills (Canoga Park)). The company became TRW in 1965, another aerospace company and a major competitor to Hughes Aircraft. In 1951 Hughes Aircraft Co. built a missile plant in Tucson, Arizona due to Howard Hughes' fear that his Culver City, California plant could be attacked. By

2910-704: The Santa Maria Museum of Flight . As of 2016 , another H-1 replica is being built at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Data from "Howard Hughes' H-1: The Search for the Fastest Plane in the World". General characteristics Performance Radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ( ranging ), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles ), and radial velocity of objects relative to

3007-499: The Tomahawk Cruise Missile , Advanced Cruise Missile , Standard missile , Stinger missile , Phalanx Close-in weapon system , and Rolling Airframe Missile into Hughes' portfolio. In 1994 Hughes Electronics introduced DirecTV , the world's first high-powered DBS service. In 1995 Hughes Electronic's Hughes Space and Communications division became the largest supplier of commercial satellites. Also in 1995

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3104-1277: The United Kingdom , which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging". The term radar has since entered English and other languages as an anacronym , a common noun, losing all capitalization . The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy , air-defense systems , anti-missile systems , marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anti-collision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, radar remote sensing , altimetry and flight control systems , guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars , and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. Modern high tech radar systems use digital signal processing and machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels. Other systems which are similar to radar make use of other parts of

3201-518: The aluminium skin of the aircraft extremely smooth. The H-1 had retractable main landing gear and a fully retractable hydraulically actuated tail skid to reduce the drag of a conventional wheel and maximize speed. It was fitted with a Pratt & Whitney R-1535 twin-row 14-cylinder radial engine of 1,535 cubic inches (25.15 L), originally rated at 700 horsepower (522 kW) but tuned to produce over 1,000 horsepower (750 kW). To contest both maximum speed and long-distance racing records

3298-440: The electromagnetic spectrum . One example is lidar , which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. As early as 1886, German physicist Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects. In 1895, Alexander Popov ,

3395-407: The reflective surfaces . A corner reflector consists of three flat surfaces meeting like the inside corner of a cube. The structure will reflect waves entering its opening directly back to the source. They are commonly used as radar reflectors to make otherwise difficult-to-detect objects easier to detect. Corner reflectors on boats, for example, make them more detectable to avoid collision or during

3492-534: The "new boy" Arnold Frederic Wilkins to conduct an extensive review of available shortwave units. Wilkins would select a General Post Office model after noting its manual's description of a "fading" effect (the common term for interference at the time) when aircraft flew overhead. By placing a transmitter and receiver on opposite sides of the Potomac River in 1922, U.S. Navy researchers A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Young discovered that ships passing through

3589-413: The 1920s went on to lead the U.K. research establishment to make many advances using radio techniques, including the probing of the ionosphere and the detection of lightning at long distances. Through his lightning experiments, Watson-Watt became an expert on the use of radio direction finding before turning his inquiry to shortwave transmission. Requiring a suitable receiver for such studies, he told

3686-604: The 2003 AirVenture at Oshkosh, Wisconsin . On his way home to Oregon, he refueled the aircraft in Gillette, Wyoming . Wright met briefly with local reporters and said that the aircraft had been having propeller "gear problems". An hour after taking off, the aircraft crashed just north of the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park , killing Wright. The replica, slated to be used in

3783-464: The 3rd and 4th passes. Exhausting the fuel supply, he crash-landed in a beet field south of Santa Ana without serious damage to either himself or the aircraft. When his compatriots arrived at the crash site Hughes said "We can fix her; she'll go faster." Hughes later made minor changes to the H-1 Racer to make it more suitable for a transcontinental speed record attempt. The most significant change

3880-476: The Aerospace Group continued to diversify and become massively profitable, and became a primary focus of the company. The company developed radar systems, electro-optical systems, the first working laser , aircraft computer systems, missile systems, ion-propulsion engines (for space travel), and many other advanced technologies. The 'Electronic Properties Information Center' (EPIC) of the United States

3977-694: The Boeing Company purchased three units within Hughes Electronics Corp.: Hughes Space and Communications Co., Hughes Electron Dynamics , and Spectrolab Inc. , in addition to Hughes Electronics' interest in HRL, the company's primary research laboratory. The four joined Boeing Satellite Systems, a company subsidiary, later becoming the Satellite Development Center, part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. In 2003

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4074-561: The H-1's maiden flight on August 17, 1935, at Grand Central Airport in Glendale, California . A month later, on 13 September at Martin Field near Santa Ana, California , Hughes broke the landplane speed record clocking 352.39 mph (567.12 km/h) averaged over four timed passes. The aircraft was loaded with a minimal amount of fuel to keep the weight down and Hughes was not supposed to make

4171-778: The Mitsubishi Zero strongly denied the allegation of the Hughes H-1 influencing the design of the Japanese fighter aircraft. The Hughes H-1 Racer is featured in the 1940 RKO Radio Pictures movie Men Against the Sky , playing the role of a prototype "McLean Aircraft" high-speed pursuit craft. The original H-1 Racer was donated to the Smithsonian in 1975 and is on display at the National Air and Space Museum . Due to

4268-554: The National Air Race Museum from 1993 to 1994, after which it was placed in storage. Jim Wright of Cottage Grove, Oregon , built a full-scale replica of the H-1 that he first flew in 2002. His replica was so close to the original that the FAA granted it serial number 2 of the model. His achievement in recreating the aircraft was heralded in many aviation magazines. On August 4, 2003, Wright unveiled his H-1 replica at

4365-627: The United States with the Joint Surveillance System (JSS) AN/FYQ-93 including NORAD with Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) and provided defense systems and air traffic control systems around the world. These systems are massive and at its peak Ground Systems Group employed 15,000 people and generated revenue in excess of $ 1 billion per year. These systems included the following Ground Systems Group subsystems: Computer H5118, Consoles HMD-22 and HMD-44, Liquid Crystal Large Screen Displays, and Software that set

4462-724: The United States, independently and in great secrecy, developed technologies that led to the modern version of radar. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa followed prewar Great Britain's radar development, Hungary and Sweden generated its radar technology during the war. In France in 1934, following systematic studies on the split-anode magnetron , the research branch of the Compagnie générale de la télégraphie sans fil (CSF) headed by Maurice Ponte with Henri Gutton, Sylvain Berline and M. Hugon, began developing an obstacle-locating radio apparatus, aspects of which were installed on

4559-404: The appearance of a conflict of interest . The money provided to HHMI by Hughes Aircraft led to major improvements in genetics and cancer research. The city of Fullerton, California , named Hughes Drive after the site that the company formerly occupied before 1997. After Hughes closed, the city developed Amerige Heights, a residential community. Hughes H-1 Racer The Hughes H-1 Racer

4656-537: The arrest of Oshchepkov and his subsequent gulag sentence. In total, only 607 Redut stations were produced during the war. The first Russian airborne radar, Gneiss-2 , entered into service in June 1943 on Pe-2 dive bombers. More than 230 Gneiss-2 stations were produced by the end of 1944. The French and Soviet systems, however, featured continuous-wave operation that did not provide the full performance ultimately synonymous with modern radar systems. Full radar evolved as

4753-725: The astronauts on the last flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger , were Hughes alumni. Hughes Aircraft Ground Systems Group was located in Fullerton, California . The facility was 3 million square feet and included manufacturing, laboratories, offices, and a Munson road test course. It designed developed and produced the Air Defense Systems that replaced the Semi Automatic Defense Ground Environment (SAGE) in

4850-479: The beam path caused the received signal to fade in and out. Taylor submitted a report, suggesting that this phenomenon might be used to detect the presence of ships in low visibility, but the Navy did not immediately continue the work. Eight years later, Lawrence A. Hyland at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) observed similar fading effects from passing aircraft; this revelation led to a patent application as well as

4947-629: The company designed and built several prototype aircraft at Hughes Airport . These included the famous Hughes H-4 Hercules , better known by the public's nickname for it, the Spruce Goose , the H-1 racer, D-2 , and the XF-11 . However the plant's hangars at Hughes Airport, location of present-day Playa Vista in the Westside of Los Angeles, California , were primarily used as a branch plant for

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5044-490: The construction of other companies' designs. At the start of the war Hughes Aircraft had only four full-time employees—by the end the number was 80,000. During the war, the company was awarded contracts to build B-25 struts, centrifugal cannons, and machine gun feed chutes. Hughes Aircraft was one of many aerospace and defense companies which flourished in Southern California during and after World War II and

5141-408: The detection of aircraft and ships. Radar absorbing material , containing resistive and sometimes magnetic substances, is used on military vehicles to reduce radar reflection . This is the radio equivalent of painting something a dark colour so that it cannot be seen by the eye at night. Radar waves scatter in a variety of ways depending on the size (wavelength) of the radio wave and the shape of

5238-476: The detection process. As an example, moving target indication can interact with Doppler to produce signal cancellation at certain radial velocities, which degrades performance. Sea-based radar systems, semi-active radar homing , active radar homing , weather radar , military aircraft, and radar astronomy rely on the Doppler effect to enhance performance. This produces information about target velocity during

5335-411: The detection process. This also allows small objects to be detected in an environment containing much larger nearby slow moving objects. Doppler shift depends upon whether the radar configuration is active or passive. Active radar transmits a signal that is reflected back to the receiver. Passive radar depends upon the object sending a signal to the receiver. The Doppler frequency shift for active radar

5432-626: The device in patent GB593017. Development of radar greatly expanded on 1 September 1936, when Watson-Watt became superintendent of a new establishment under the British Air Ministry , Bawdsey Research Station located in Bawdsey Manor , near Felixstowe, Suffolk. Work there resulted in the design and installation of aircraft detection and tracking stations called " Chain Home " along the East and South coasts of England in time for

5529-524: The division as Palomar Technologies. In 2008, Citicorp sold the bonder division to the current management team at Palomar Technologies. In 1997 GM transferred Delco Electronics to its Delphi Automotive Systems business. Later that year the assets of Hughes Aircraft were sold to Raytheon for $ 9.5 billion. The remaining companies remained under the Hughes Electronics name and within GM. In 2000,

5626-538: The electric field is perpendicular to the direction of propagation, and the electric field direction is the polarization of the wave. For a transmitted radar signal, the polarization can be controlled to yield different effects. Radars use horizontal, vertical, linear, and circular polarization to detect different types of reflections. For example, circular polarization is used to minimize the interference caused by rain. Linear polarization returns usually indicate metal surfaces. Random polarization returns usually indicate

5723-559: The end of that year, the U.S. Air Force had purchased the property and contracted Hughes (and subsequently Raytheon ) to operate the site as Air Force Plant 44 . Howard Hughes donated Hughes Aircraft to the newly formed Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in 1953 allegedly as a way of avoiding taxes on its huge income. The next year, Lawrence A. "Pat" Hyland was hired as vice president and general manager of Hughes Aircraft; he would ultimately become company president and CEO after Howard Hughes' death in 1976. Under Hyland's guidance,

5820-473: The entire area in front of it, and then used one of Watson-Watt's own radio direction finders to determine the direction of the returned echoes. This fact meant CH transmitters had to be much more powerful and have better antennas than competing systems but allowed its rapid introduction using existing technologies. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the UK, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. Britain shared

5917-606: The film The Aviator , was destroyed. The official accident report detailed the failure of a counterweight on the constant speed propeller . On December 17, 2003, Cottage Grove State Airport was dedicated as Jim Wright Field. Other non-flying replicas are displayed at the Thomas T. Beam Engineering Complex at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (donated by the Howard Hughes Corporation in 1988) and

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6014-466: The firm GEMA  [ de ] in Germany and then another in June 1935 by an Air Ministry team led by Robert Watson-Watt in Great Britain. In 1935, Watson-Watt was asked to judge recent reports of a German radio-based death ray and turned the request over to Wilkins. Wilkins returned a set of calculations demonstrating the system was basically impossible. When Watson-Watt then asked what such

6111-470: The fleet of over 100 aircraft used in the production. The two men shared a common interest in aviation and hatched a plan to build a record -beating aircraft. The aircraft was given many names, but is commonly known as the H-1. It was the first aircraft type produced by the Hughes Aircraft company. Design studies began in 1934 with an exacting scale model (over two feet in length) that was tested in

6208-607: The flight was 322 mph (518 km/h). Considering that contemporary service aircraft were still biplanes , Hughes fully expected the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) to embrace his aircraft's new design and make the H-1 the basis for a new generation of U.S. fighter aircraft. His efforts to persuade the Air Corps failed. In postwar testimony before the Senate, Hughes indicated that resistance to

6305-484: The group purchased Magnavox Electronic Systems from the Carlyle Group . In 1996 Hughes Electronics and PanAmSat agree to merge their fixed satellite services into a new publicly held company, also called PanAmSat with Hughes Electronics as majority shareholder. In 1995, Hughes Aircraft sold its Technology Products Division (automated wire and die bonder) to an investor group led by Citicorp and incorporated

6402-412: The innovative design was the basis for the USAAC rejection of the H-1, "I tried to sell that airplane to the Army but they turned it down because at that time the Army did not think a cantilever monoplane was proper for a pursuit ship ...". Aviation writer William Wraga asserts that the H-1 Racer inspired later radial engine fighters such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt , the Mitsubishi A6M Zero and

6499-402: The institute fulfilled its charitable mission and that it did not continue to operate as a tax shelter. In January 1984 Judge Grover C. Brown ruled that the Chancery Court should appoint the trustees because Hughes had not left a succession plan. Brown asked for both the executive committee and the attorney general's office to submit a list of recommendations that he could approve. Brown approved

6596-400: The newly formed US Air Force on air-to-air missiles, delivering the AIM-4 Falcon , then known as the F-98. The MA-1/Falcon package, with several upgrades, was the primary interceptor weapon system of the USAF for many years, lasting into the 1980s. Ramo and Wooldridge, having failed to reach an agreement with Howard Hughes regarding management problems, resigned in September 1953 and founded

6693-416: The ocean liner Normandie in 1935. During the same period, Soviet military engineer P.K. Oshchepkov , in collaboration with the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute , produced an experimental apparatus, RAPID, capable of detecting an aircraft within 3 km of a receiver. The Soviets produced their first mass production radars RUS-1 and RUS-2 Redut in 1939 but further development was slowed following

6790-418: The ongoing construction project at the NASM, the Hughes Racer is being kept on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA . The wings and fuselage have been separated for space reasons. A static replica H-1 was displayed on a pole alongside Hughes' " Spruce Goose " at Long Beach when the latter aircraft was displayed in a dome adjacent to the Queen Mary until 1992. It was later displayed in

6887-402: The original short-span high-speed wings were replaced with a set of longer ones for long-distance flights. Before the H-1 took to the air, the world absolute speed record was 440.7 mph (709.2 km/h), held by a Macchi M.C.72 seaplane and set in October 1934. The landplane record was 314.32 mph (505.85 km/h), averaged by Raymond Delmotte in a Caudron C.460 . Hughes piloted

6984-531: The outbreak of World War II in 1939. This system provided the vital advance information that helped the Royal Air Force win the Battle of Britain ; without it, significant numbers of fighter aircraft, which Great Britain did not have available, would always have needed to be in the air to respond quickly. The radar formed part of the " Dowding system " for collecting reports of enemy aircraft and coordinating

7081-706: The primary tool for short-term weather forecasting and watching for severe weather such as thunderstorms , tornadoes , winter storms , precipitation types, etc. Geologists use specialized ground-penetrating radars to map the composition of Earth's crust . Police forces use radar guns to monitor vehicle speeds on the roads. Automotive radars are used for adaptive cruise control and emergency breaking on vehicles by ignoring stationary roadside objects that could cause incorrect brake application and instead measuring moving objects to prevent collision with other vehicles. As part of Intelligent Transport Systems , fixed-position stopped vehicle detection (SVD) radars are mounted on

7178-400: The public. Despite a highly critical committee report, Hughes was cleared. The company then expanded into the booming electronics field, eventually employing 3,300 Ph.D.s. Hughes hired Ira Eaker , Harold L. George , and Tex Thornton to run the company. By 1953, the company employed 17,000 and had $ 600,000,000 in government contracts. In 1948 Hughes created a new division of the company,

7275-432: The radial component of the velocity is relevant. When the reflector is moving at right angle to the radar beam, it has no relative velocity. Objects moving parallel to the radar beam produce the maximum Doppler frequency shift. When the transmit frequency ( F T {\displaystyle F_{T}} ) is pulsed, using a pulse repeat frequency of F R {\displaystyle F_{R}} ,

7372-472: The remaining parts of Hughes Electronics (DirecTV, DirecTV Latin America, PanAmSat, Hughes Network Systems) were purchased by News Corporation from GM and renamed The DirecTV Group . The wide range of science and technology developed by Hughes Aircraft never included medical applications because the company was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). This restriction was imposed to avoid even

7469-414: The response. Given all required funding and development support, the team produced working radar systems in 1935 and began deployment. By 1936, the first five Chain Home (CH) systems were operational and by 1940 stretched across the entire UK including Northern Ireland. Even by standards of the era, CH was crude; instead of broadcasting and receiving from an aimed antenna, CH broadcast a signal floodlighting

7566-432: The rest in 50 million shares of GM Class H stock. On December 31, 1985, General Motors merged Hughes Aircraft with its Delco Electronics unit to form Hughes Electronics Corporation, an independent subsidiary. The group then consisted of: Delco Electronics Corporation and Hughes Aircraft Company. In August 1992 Hughes Aircraft completed its purchase of General Dynamics ' missile businesses for $ 450 million. This brought

7663-410: The resulting frequency spectrum will contain harmonic frequencies above and below F T {\displaystyle F_{T}} with a distance of F R {\displaystyle F_{R}} . As a result, the Doppler measurement is only non-ambiguous if the Doppler frequency shift is less than half of F R {\displaystyle F_{R}} , called

7760-427: The roadside to detect stranded vehicles, obstructions and debris by inverting the automotive radar approach and ignoring moving objects. Smaller radar systems are used to detect human movement . Examples are breathing pattern detection for sleep monitoring and hand and finger gesture detection for computer interaction. Automatic door opening, light activation and intruder sensing are also common. A radar system has

7857-452: The same Culver City complex as Hughes Aircraft, despite being separately owned and managed. This entity subsequently became fully independent from Hughes Aircraft and changed its name to Hughes Helicopters . After Hughes' 1976 death, Hughes Aircraft was acquired by General Motors from HHMI in 1985 and was put under the umbrella of Hughes Electronics which became DirecTV , until GM sold its assets to Raytheon in 1997. During World War II

7954-407: The scattered energy back toward the source. The extent to which an object reflects or scatters radio waves is called its radar cross-section . The power P r returning to the receiving antenna is given by the equation: where In the common case where the transmitter and the receiver are at the same location, R t = R r and the term R t ² R r ² can be replaced by R , where R

8051-416: The site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track aircraft , ships , spacecraft , guided missiles , motor vehicles , map weather formations , and terrain . A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna , a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and

8148-586: The standard for software development based on science and engineering starting with the Combat Grande System. Ground Systems Group was known to push technology envelopes in the computers, displays, local area networks, human interfaces, and software in their systems. They also blazed the path to very highly distributed human intensive systems. Hughes Space and Communications Group and the Hughes Space Systems Division built

8245-491: The target. If the wavelength is much shorter than the target's size, the wave will bounce off in a way similar to the way light is reflected by a mirror . If the wavelength is much longer than the size of the target, the target may not be visible because of poor reflection. Low-frequency radar technology is dependent on resonances for detection, but not identification, of targets. This is described by Rayleigh scattering , an effect that creates Earth's blue sky and red sunsets. When

8342-585: The technology with the U.S. during the 1940 Tizard Mission . In April 1940, Popular Science showed an example of a radar unit using the Watson-Watt patent in an article on air defence. Also, in late 1941 Popular Mechanics had an article in which a U.S. scientist speculated about the British early warning system on the English east coast and came close to what it was and how it worked. Watson-Watt

8439-879: The transmitter. The reflected radar signals captured by the receiving antenna are usually very weak. They can be strengthened by electronic amplifiers . More sophisticated methods of signal processing are also used in order to recover useful radar signals. The weak absorption of radio waves by the medium through which they pass is what enables radar sets to detect objects at relatively long ranges—ranges at which other electromagnetic wavelengths, such as visible light , infrared light , and ultraviolet light , are too strongly attenuated. Weather phenomena, such as fog, clouds, rain, falling snow, and sleet, that block visible light are usually transparent to radio waves. Certain radio frequencies that are absorbed or scattered by water vapour, raindrops, or atmospheric gases (especially oxygen) are avoided when designing radars, except when their detection

8536-487: The two length scales are comparable, there may be resonances . Early radars used very long wavelengths that were larger than the targets and thus received a vague signal, whereas many modern systems use shorter wavelengths (a few centimetres or less) that can image objects as small as a loaf of bread. Short radio waves reflect from curves and corners in a way similar to glint from a rounded piece of glass. The most reflective targets for short wavelengths have 90° angles between

8633-472: The use of radar altimeters possible in certain cases. The radar signals that are reflected back towards the radar receiver are the desirable ones that make radar detection work. If the object is moving either toward or away from the transmitter, there will be a slight change in the frequency of the radio waves due to the Doppler effect . Radar receivers are usually, but not always, in the same location as

8730-518: The world's first geosynchronous communications satellite , Syncom , in 1963 and followed by the first geosynchronous weather satellite, ATS-1, in 1966. Later that year their Surveyor 1 made the first soft landing on the Moon as part of the lead-up to the Moon landings in Project Apollo . Hughes also built Pioneer Venus in 1978, which performed the first extensive radar mapping of Venus , and

8827-608: Was a 1938 Bell Lab unit on some United Air Lines aircraft. Aircraft can land in fog at airports equipped with radar-assisted ground-controlled approach systems in which the plane's position is observed on precision approach radar screens by operators who thereby give radio landing instructions to the pilot, maintaining the aircraft on a defined approach path to the runway. Military fighter aircraft are usually fitted with air-to-air targeting radars, to detect and target enemy aircraft. In addition, larger specialized military aircraft carry powerful airborne radars to observe air traffic over

8924-475: Was at one time the largest employer in the area. Yet, employment had dropped to 800 by 1947. By the summer of 1947 certain politicians had become concerned about Hughes' alleged mismanagement of the Spruce Goose and the XF-11 photo reconnaissance plane project. They formed a special committee to investigate Hughes which culminated in a much-followed Senate investigation, one of the first to be televised to

9021-673: Was commercially unsuccessful. In 1955, Howard Hughes split the helicopter production unit from the Hughes Aircraft Company, and reconstituted it with Hughes Tool Company, calling it Hughes Tool Company's Aircraft Division . The Aircraft Division had a focus on the production of light helicopters, mainly the Hughes 269 / 300 and the OH-6 Cayuse / Hughes 500 . Hughes left no will and following his death in 1976 there were numerous claims to his estate . A Hughes executive and

9118-540: Was hosted at the Hughes Culver City library in the 1970s. EPIC published the multi-volume Handbook of Electronic Materials as public documents. Nobel Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann had Hughes connections: Feynman would hold weekly seminars at Hughes Research Laboratories ; Gell-Mann shared an office with Malcolm Currie, later a chairman of the board and chief executive officer at Hughes Aircraft. Greg Jarvis and Ronald McNair , two of

9215-748: Was sent to the U.S. in 1941 to advise on air defense after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor . Alfred Lee Loomis organized the secret MIT Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts which developed microwave radar technology in the years 1941–45. Later, in 1943, Page greatly improved radar with the monopulse technique that was used for many years in most radar applications. The war precipitated research to find better resolution, more portability, and more features for radar, including small, lightweight sets to equip night fighters ( aircraft interception radar ) and maritime patrol aircraft ( air-to-surface-vessel radar ), and complementary navigation systems like Oboe used by

9312-411: Was the first to use radio waves to detect "the presence of distant metallic objects". In 1904, he demonstrated the feasibility of detecting a ship in dense fog, but not its distance from the transmitter. He obtained a patent for his detection device in April 1904 and later a patent for a related amendment for estimating the distance to the ship. He also obtained a British patent on 23 September 1904 for

9409-416: Was the fitting of a new set of wings of increased span, giving it a lower wing loading . On January 19, 1937, a year and a half after setting the landplane speed record in the H-1, Hughes broke his own transcontinental speed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds, smashing the previous time of 9 hours, 27 minutes by two hours. His average speed over

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