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Oddball GEC Marconi military electronics
adriansmith31:
This is a very long shot but is there any ex GEC Marconi engineers here or anyone who worked on custom military electronics?
I came across a rather interesting box called a GRF control panel which is ex UK Royal Air Force which looks like some video system control panel. It has led readouts for time into mission, frame sequence etc and keys relating to switching video inputs. Going by the keys it looks like this is something to do with the tornado jet. There's no information on the net unsurprisingly.
Anyway it is full of CPLD and EPROM chips used as combinational logic. It all runs off 5v and communicates with a host system over RS232. This just appears to be a keyboard and display assembly but it's outputting a constant stream of data.
I've been unable to make any sense from it and was hoping on the very slim chance someone has seen something similar who can give any information on the communication protocol it uses.
I've an article on my blog with pictures and a link to a YouTube video of a teardown and example of the data stream plus EPROM dumps. It's here if anyone wants to take a look https://www.adrian-smith31.co.uk/blog/2020/11/oddball-military-hardware-grf-control-panel/
It's probably going to be used for parts but if something meaningful can be done with it via the serial port it would make an interesting project.
coppice:
I think its for thermal image control. There is a button labelled FLIR, which usually means forward looking infra red. GEC-Marconi Avionics made a lot of airborne thermal imaging equipment. Its not production airborne equipment. You don't put all those parts in sockets and fly the unit - they fall out. I guess it might be socketed if it is production ground replay equipment.
coppercone2:
I think turbulence could cause problems and cause a fail.
Could be for calibrating or testing a system prior to installation or something. It's probobly difficult to install the thing that its connected to so they test it right before starting the work because it means there is a plane out of service being hooked up with imaging pods or something. You might need to drill some holes and rivet some things etc. There is a reason all those avionics upgrades and retrofits are super expensive and time consuming.
Military = fly low in turbulence to avoid detection, rapidly change altitude, et. They don't plan the nice route like a commercial air liner all the time.
What does RAD mean? Is that a radiation detector that they can aim at things to see the fall out after nuclear weapons? or something with radians? Radial?
LaserSteve:
Ask on Military Aircrew forumn on PPRUNE.
adriansmith31:
Yeah will try that. As for the unit there's also TV tab front and rear pilot and navigator audio etc. The tornado jet recorded to a VHS tape(s) capturing FLIR footage, video to the TV tab units, the HUD etc. I've seen the VHS recorder units on eBay which are made by teac. Think this unit is a keyboard and display for a video switching and mixing device for offloading footage from the tapes to another medium.
I wondered how well a VHS recorder ruggedised or not would work in a jet at 500mph pulling 6g+ turns. 😂
I know the tornado had an avionics upgrade at some point and mission footage was recorded to solid state and HDD recorders.
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