Surely one of the rarest Land Rovers manufactured is the 101 FC “vampire”.
The Vampire acronym means:
Vehicle Army Mobile Position Interferometry Radio Equipment.
The vehicle’s purpose was to identify the origin of radio signals.
Teams of 3 Vampires would erect their antennas in different remote locations and then use a method of radio triangulation to locate signal sources.
The Vampires could also operate individually by setting up additional antennas some distance away that were carried in a specialised Sankey trailer.
The antenna mast was stored diagonally across the roof of the vehicle. It was unlocked and then swung into a vertical position, before telescoping to the required operational height.
Leveling jacks are installed on the rear corners of the vehicle to increase its stability while the antenna was raised. Vampires have no rear door and instead have a large spool of cable that reeled out as the antenna went up.
Some 101’s came with a unique transmission driven Nokken winch, whose 65 metre cable can be routed fore or aft of the vehicle through a chassis mounted pulley system.
Today we made the trip to Suffolk to collect the vampire, and it was driven the 200 + miles home without incident.
The vampire is for one of our valued clients – a collector in America, and once the appropriate export licence has been applied for – The Land Rover will be shipped to the USA.
