Baza radar Pipera

Baza radar Pipera (Baza de reparații și fabricații de tehnică de radiolocație, the radar repair and manufacturing base) in Bucharest worked on the site of the former royal military airfield of Pipera, in the building of today’s Aviation Museum [1][2]. It had a large repair sector for imported radars, a research, design and technological engineering section, and facilities for spare parts and accessories, small series of radar equipment and stations, and radar simulators [1]. In the 1970s it made, with the radio-technical troops’ command, the first Romanian equipment for linking and synchronising the radar stations of radar subunits [3].

History

In 1951 the Air Force command set up barracks no. 429 on the site; in 1952 it became Central Workshop no. 834 for the repair of airfield technical equipment and, the following year, a workshop for special installations and constructions [2]. In 1959 the anti-aircraft defence command set up Base 255 for airfield equipment repair and radiolocation on this structure, renamed Base 255 for Radio-technical Repairs in 1964 [2]. A design sector set up in 1969 became a research and design section in 1973, with a scientific research laboratory and prototype workshop, a design workshop for radar spare parts and tools, and a technological engineering workshop [2]. An electronic manufacturing workshop for small series of approved prototypes followed in 1979, and a radar manufacturing section for the series production of the START-1 in 1986; the latter was dissolved in 1988, when IEI took over the product [2].

Products

The base made the SAO-1 and SAEL radar simulators, produced for almost all radio-technical subunits in the country, the GB-m, GB-dm, GB-cm and BRUM-2 ground jamming generators for training radar crews and the GBM airborne generators [2]. It designed the START-1, the first radar station for the Air Force, built its experimental model and first prototype, and made a large parabolic radar antenna, a first in Romania [2]. After the START-1 project was handed over to IEI, the base’s START-1 team dissolved itself and went back to modernising imported radar subassemblies: blocks were redesigned with semiconductors in place of valves, such as the AFI-M, DD-08M and D-71M [2]. It also assimilated thousands of radar spare parts and reconditioned hundreds of power tubes (magnetrons, thyratrons, spark gaps), together with ICRET and the picture tube factory [2].