Good morning. When I was asked to provide a lecture for the QRP convention my first comment was that my experience is more in the QRO category! They said anything for a change, so here I am! This lecture is essentially the same as the one I gave to the IEE HF Conference held at Bath University in 2003 in the section they referred to as ‘Historical Perspective’.
Note recent anniversaries of Poldhu 2001, Goonhilly 1962. I am concerned that with respect to recorded history there seems to have been an incredible leap from Marconi’s experiments at Poldhu to Satellite Communications, with what happened in between being briefly glossed over.
However a great deal was invested in developing radio and electronic technology during the almost forgotten 61 years between Marconi’s first trans Atlantic transmission and the launch of Telstar.
Around 30 years ago I was a technician working on some of the last remaining international telecommunication circuits carried via HF radio. I started my career at Dorchester transmitting station but my real passion for HF and its history developed when working at Bearley receiving station near Stratford upon Avon. Working with a mixture of valve and transistor equipment and being at a receiving station I got a very good feel for HF comms equipment, HF radio propagation and its various quirks.
With the spectacular impact of satellite communications at that time no one was interested in HF radio and when I tried to investigate the history of the HF radio service most of the books I found seemed to make a graceful leap from Poldhu to Telstar.
So as the title suggests I am pleased to be able to provide a short historical perspective on radio tele-communications between Poldhu and Telstar.