TWO DAY INDUSTRIAL VISIT

The VII semester students of the Department of Electronics and Communication along with 4 faculty members visited the Air Force Station, Tughlakabad, in New Delhi. There were two batches of students – first batch comprised of 48 students who visited on 26th August 2014 and the second batch of 57 students visited the station on 27th August 2014. Two faculties escorted the students during each visit. It is a premier Base Repair Depot (BRD) under Maintenance Command (IAF). The visit to BRD, comprised visits to various production and repairing wings, calibration facilities, logistics sites and other vital installations. The students were briefed by the Depot personnel of Air Force Station Tughlakabad, on the ongoing and future projects. Their emphasis is strongly on indigenisation to achieve self-reliance, while ensuring reliability and quality production output. Stress is given upon the need to find solution to techno-logistic challenges for sustaining operational preparedness of the IAF.

The visit provided a great opportunity for the students to see some of the latest technologies related to Air defence radars and missile deployment and guidance systems, along with their subassemblies. The visit also created awareness amongst the final year students about future research and development prospects and career initiatives.

The students visited various Production Wings (PW) where repairing of different components is being done. Each PW has a specified number to distinguish them from one other. When these components are perfectly repaired & tested, they are sent in the field.

The students also witnessed the repairing of IC of Radar. This section was completely automatic and called ATE (Automatic Testing Equipment). CPU was installed with software called “Dolphin” which contained all the information related to parameters of different circuits. Defective PCB’s were connected to computer using adapter and the output in terms of pulses could be easily seen on the monitor. CPU contained different specifications of different PCB’s. In this PW total 170 types of PCB were being repaired. This is a totally digitized repairing section.

In Production Wing no-7 the students were introduced to different types of Radars and Amplifiers used in Radar such as THD 1955 which is the backbone of Indian Air Defence System. The huge THD 1955 3D is a long range surveillance radar that was once in widespread use throughout NATO. This radar is originally of French design and has range of 235nm. Another radar is a 3D radar TRS 2215 which employs electronic phase scanning in elevation and is derived from the height finding radar SATRAPE presently in use in the French Air Force. The range of this radar is 235 nm. The students also saw the ROHINI RADAR which is a multifunction medium range surveillance radar developed by the DRDO and produced by BEL. It is capable of handling multiple targets simultaneously and can precisely calculate the height at which projectiles fly. The ROHINI radar can track multiple targets like fighter jets and missiles travelling at supersonic speeds of over 3000 km/hr.

In Production Wing No 3 the students were shown the presence of PECHORA RADAR, a Russian early warning system against missile attack. PECHORA is a bistatic passive electronically scanned array early warning radar consisting of two separate large phased-array antennas separated by around 500 metres to 1.5 kilometres .The system operates on VHF(150 to 200 MHz) at a wavelength of 1.5 to 2 meters.

The visit was well appreciated by the students as per feedback given by them. The visit was very educative and informative for students as well as faculty members accompanying the students. This visit will help students in their future life as it has brought about a positive change in thinking regarding importance of Engineering in defence as well as in all fields of life.