2020-06-04
FOTON-2, PSM-2 flight safety devices.
Marek Kaiper
Admission
In the fall of the Polish People’s Republic, aviation regiments used a large number of specialized devices mounted mainly on vehicles. In the electro-gas service, among others, various types of oxygen and technical gas dispensers, APA-4 and APA-5 aircraft starters, fuel tanks and lubrication vans, MPS service, PSŁ-2 battery charging stations of the automotive service, radar, searchlights and beacons, insurance services flights, radio stations on cars (R-140, R-845, R-831 and others) as well as the field flight control station SSD-2 called "grate" or "krasula" because of the plaid painting and the shelter of the ARO KU series of communication services. In addition, vehicles of the aviation engineering service of the KPSO-17M diagnostic station as well as airport service, health service and fire brigade company vehicles should be added. This great number of vehicles was divided into projections which, in the event of an alarm, would leave the airport area, standing in columns on various nearby side roads, awaiting further orders. In this huge number of vehicles, they have completely disappeared and there are almost unknown laboratories used only for departures to backup airports or road sections of the airport (DOLs) and during exercises. These were the Foton 2 field photographic laboratory, the PSM-2 field weather station and the Łucz 71 recorder reading device, as well as the ARO KU radio correspondence control room. It should be added that all conversations with airplanes carried out from correspondence radios and flight insurance devices (radio finders, RSL) and command posts were recorded on own reel to reel tape recorders M-64 "Zwuk-1", ZRK MAK-S and MAK2-S, MN-61 wire and cassette RK-84 as well as MS-61 wire and cassette recorders Elmasz RK-1681T, the latter with automatic time recording, was used at the SSD-2 starting command post. Additionally, each combat aircraft had its own MS-61 wire recorder (recording radio correspondence on a special thin wire). All radio and telephone correspondence was recorded on special multi-track tape recorders, most often the Hungarian-made SHR-208 (eight tracks) located in the air traffic control tower.
FOTON-2 field photo laboratory.
It was intended for the technical processing of exposed photographic films from 80 mm aircraft cameras (AFA-39Z or other), SARPP-12 recording devices and S-13, AKS-3, SSz-45-1 -100 OS or other series photocars. And also from radar cameras of the MRŁ-1 station, 35 mm FARM2 / FARM3, FED or Zorkij 2 cameras; 3 or 4 stations RSP-7 / RSP-7T, PAU-476-1A stations of the RSP-10 / RSP-10 MN station and cameras stocked by a photographic platoon, 35 mm most often Zenit3M or a medium-format 61.5 mm (6×6 frame) Kiew-80 / Salut -S camera. The films in the KS-10 cassette from the SARPP-12 recorder, after being developed, were sent to the objective flight control laboratory, where they were displayed on the 5PO-1 "Mikrofot" microfilm reader for detailed analysis, and the photocarabiners were treated similarly.
Written by Marek Kaiper