Manufacturing Support Engineering for the Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS) for Naval Aircraft Carriers:
The ACLS was a fascinating system which allowed an aircraft carrier to automatically land a fighter plane on its deck without a pilot controlling the plane.
It included a very high frequency offset-feed parabolic radar dish which was spun to create a 'cone' shaped radar field pointing off the back of the aircraft carrier. The pilot positioned their plane behind the aircraft carrier into the radar field, and then if the plane was exactly on track to land, it would be exactly in the middle of cone radar field.
But if it were off track, a receiver on board the plane would detect the variation in the radar field signal strength and produce a 'spin-error'...a sine wave signal whose amplitude indicated how far off center the plane was and whose phase indicated the direction off center.
A separate transmitter on board the plane radioed this spin-error to the ship and a computer system on the ship determined how the plane needed to move to correct the error and put it back on course for landing. The ship then sent flight control commands back to the plane via another radio link to steer the plane back on course until it landed on the deck of the ship.
Motorola manufactured the receiver for the plane which detected the radar field and generated the spin-error signal. My task was to fix problems on the manufacturing line so that we could continue supplying the receivers to the U.S. Navy.