RAF Trimingham - 1981 To Date

1981 To Date

In 1981 the RAF Trmingham was closed and the site had been sold and the guardhouse converted into a private house, but by the latter part of the 1980s the now Ministry of Defence decided to re-purchase the site. The RAF installed a Marconi Type 91 Martello radar operated by No Signals Unit acting as a Ready Platform (along with RAF Hopton and RAF Weybourne) for the UKADGE Series II (United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment) Radar System controlled from the R3 underground control centre at RAF Neatishead. The guardhouse was converted into staff accommodation and offices and basic mess facilities. In May 1996 the Marconi Type 91 'Martello' radar at Trimingham was sold to the Turkish Ministry of Defence and it was replaced by what used to be known as No 86 Signals Unit, with a Type 93 (Plessey type ADGE-305, NATO designation TGRI 50011) that had been moved from Hopton when that base was closed. The Type 93 was originally a mobile installation (however it never actually obtained UK Dept of Transport authorisation to be allowed on UK roads under its own power and anytime it had to be moved, civilian low-loader transport specialists had to be contracted in), but at Trimingham it was fixed to a permanent mounting, due to constant cracking issues with the frame and mobile trailer. The Kevlon dome composed of irregular polygons erected around it and became known locally as the Trimingham golf ball.

The Type 93 was replaced by the Type 101 radar, which was itself replaced by the TPS-77 radar which has increased capabilities to detect targets in the vicinity of the now prolific wind farms along the North Sea coast. Today the TPS-77 feeds constant data back to the Control and Reporting Centres (CRC's) at RAF Boulmer in Northumberland and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. RAF Neatishead has now been downgraded to a remote radar head which is actually at Trimingham. Neatishead only being retained as the circuits from Trimingham pass through Neatishead