Handheld radar - more pictures

It would seem Ground Surveilance Radar has been around since at least the 1980's. here's a Falklands story from the AViate magazine (Summer 2007):

...In those days, our EW fit consisted of the Hand Held Radar Warner Mk2(HWR2), a bit of kit like a large pointy ray gun, which you plugged into the mic-tel of your helmet. You would occasionally get random beeps or squeaks from it, but that was about as far as it went. On this day it suddenly gave a brisk ‘breep!’ Very strange, I thought: that was just like the EW training tapes we had to listen to during ground training. Breep, breep...breep, breep. Crivens I said to myself (being unplugged from the intercom...

a little more here

Portaguard; two thirds ready built!

Advanced Adaptive PIR/Microwave Technology Sensor. (Napco C-100 STLRE)


This sensor combines X Band microwave with Passive Infra Red and operates over a wide arc up to 50 feet.

I picked this one up for £1 at a local rag market (the same one the UK Border Patrol pick up illegal immigrants) in Birmingham; there were a few there last Sunday.

It came in a standard PIR package; the wall-mounted kind you see everywhere, a 12v dc supply powers it (although I managed to get it running on 4AA bats) and it takes about a minute to warm up. Once warmed up it will go for days.

I had a breakthrough with it this morning, managed to locate the pins that tap into the microwave receiver (see pic). Linked them to a set of speakers and it now directly replays every movement as a series of clicks and bleeps, kinda like a bat sounds through a bat detector. I say breakthrough, pointing it out of our third story window produces an incredibly rich soundscape.

First things first, and that is to improve the range, which is about 50 feet now, to a more useful distance of, say, 500 yards or 2-3 football pitches. Next, the PCB needs enclosing.

Portaguard – Hand held Microwave Radar Ground Surveillance System (HMRGSS?)

Found this in, Janes Special forces recognition guide; a hand held device using (doppler) radar to convert movements into sound. Humans produce “zipping” sounds at 300 yards and a car, “rushing” sounds at over 600!

Information is scarce* and the contractor; Wylam Defence Systems-, wont deal with civilian queries, so we can only guess how it works or how to build our own. Hey, that’s the point.

The Portaguard probably works in the X Band of frequencies, 8 to 12 GHz,

A medium-distance, higher-precision range used in professional applications, traffic radars, Military applications, civilian marine applications, weather forecasting. Missile-targeting radars operate in this region. Most Synthetic-aperture radars operate in this frequency range. Nose-mounted aerial radar systems often operate in the X-band and K-band regions.

Notice the word, ‘movement’ in the description; the device only seems able to render moving objects audible.