Operation Gromet III, a cloud seeding project, eliminated a severe drought in Okinawa in 1971. A similar operation was successfully conducted during an earlier drought in the Philippines. Return to Successes Page Logarithmic Amplifiers were pioneered at China Lake during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Logarithmic amplifiers are nonlinear amplifiers that compress and limit the amplitude of large dynamic range electronic signals to prevent the signals from saturating following signal processing circuitry and display systems. At China Lake, these amplifiers were under development for radar signal processing applications.
Sonar signals can also have very large dynamic ranges.
In 1971, a China Lake radar design engineer transferred the design for a custom logarithmic amplifier to the Mayo Clinic that was instrumental in the design, development, and demonstration of the first ultrasonic body scanning equipment. Successes Page The Aerosol Characterization and Visibility Study was conducted during 1972 - 1977 initially for the Kern County Air Pollution Control District and then for the California State Air Resources Board, the Navy and the Air Force. Three dimensional plots of atmospheric aerosol characterization were developed from measurements made using a measurement van and an instrumented airplane. The areas measured and studied included Indian Wells Valley, the San Francisco Bay region, the San Joaquin Valley, the Los Angeles basin, Pt. The entire study which eventually included university and commercial investigators was instrumental in identifying automobile emissions as being a primary source of air pollution and lead to the adoption of catalytic converters and stricter air pollution statutes and regulations.