Special Test (Read 606 times)

No that would have been Self Test. I was probably too short with the question on the prior post.

Special Test was primarily intended for troubleshooting timing signals during AIM/AIR runs. It provided the means to conduct an attack run with the FDT whereby you could instruct the FDT to sense the occurrence of a specific signal. For example: you could tell the FDT to look for "C" time during an AIM run. The moment C time was detected, the FDT would stop the run by setting the target range and azimuth rates to zero. This had the effect of freezing the attack in time. This allowed the MA-1 tech to then troubleshoot the system with all signals that would have been active at that moment in time still energized. You could also do timing calculations by subtracting the target range when the test was stopped from the lockon range and dividing by the range rate (converted from knots) to get seconds.

It was a useful tool, but not one I saw used very often. At least in the 48th. I was just wondering if it was used anywhere else.

Even though there was actually a procedure for it in the TO, I didn't know about it until I caught the company tech rep running it one day and asked him about it. From then on it was one of my "slick tricks". Course you could accomplish the same thing in Manual Mode, but had to be quick on the Execute button.