Plan abbreviations

Just been studyin a plan of the runways from Raf Binbrook and in several places in says the word lucero and then lucero no 6 or 5 etc.
Can anyone actually tell me what it means or stands for please also there is reference to a vhf/df station plus a i think it reads pp/df station .Can anyone enlighten me on these buildings and what they would have looked like and had inside them ??
Thanks

binbrook74 wrote:

Just been studyin a plan of the runways from Raf Binbrook and in several places in says the word lucero and then lucero no 6 or 5 etc. Can anyone actually tell me what it means or stands for please ?

Lucero was the name given to BABS Mk.II landing system. By 1942 Fighter and Coastal Command were using BABS IF and BABS IC respectively which was a Beam Approach Beacon system using their 1.5-metre search radars. The aircraft radar triggered the beacon which was at the end of main runway into sending dots and dashes. This enabled the aircraft to locate the extended runway centre line. Though successful it was no use to Bomber Command as they had no 1.5-metre radar, and consequently struggled on with the hopeless Standard Beam Approach system.

Things changed in 1944 with the advent of the H2S radar which was fitted to most heavy bombers. Development led to a system known as Eureka/Rebecca. The aircraft contained a transmitter / receiver called Remote Beacon Apparatus (or something like that) Agents on the ground in enemy occupied territory used a transponder called Eureka (I've found it) to give homing signals to the aircraft.

The system was simultaneously developed into Lucero, which was the beacon equipment placed at the end of the main runway. It picked up the H2S pulses from an aircraft and returned them into 'left and right' dots and dashes, enabling the aircraft to find the centre line. Post WWII Lucero was described as '...undoubtedly the best landing aid used during the War'.

Lucero Fixed Beacon


Airfields were intended to have ideally two fixed systems at the end of the two most used runways. Theses were instantly available - switched on from the control tower. To save on installation time and expensive underground cabling the remaining four runway ends were serviced by portable or semi-portable systems. The latter used a fixed pre-aligned aerial system, as above, but the electronics and power supplies were housed in a small van. It took a while to set up.

The portable system is shown below.


The van sat on a rotatable steel turntable. A cable was connected to a small fixed antenna exactly on the runway centre line. The turntable was then 'nudged' with crowbars until the alignment was spot-on. It probably took under two hours to set up. Mobile SBA took a whole day.

Graham