Short Articles About Life At Goonhilly Earth Station.



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Now we all know that if a site is big enough there is going to be characters, and Goonhilly has had its few. I’m going to talk about three of them. The good the bad and the ugly – well not quite, but I’m leaving out the names.


My stories revolve around the building of Aerial 6 in the mid 80’s. The first person that comes to mind, told me having placed the stake, that Aerial 6 is not where they think it is. When they did the surveying there was thick gorse at the spot designated to be the centre, further this gorse was concealing an adders (snake) nest. Solution, put the stake somewhere else. I protested – but the reply was “What difference does it make”. A strong personality, respected and pragmatic, he usually got his way. On another occasion he forced the contractors to trowel the concrete apron of the antenna along its outside diameter. A decorative feature – it took them as long as the concrete was manageable and they were not happy. “It’s on the plans and I want my decorative feature” he said. I still smile when I visit the Aerial and see that feature. He had a sense of humour too; we had the Japanese Contractor principal manager in the Office wanting to know how to cash a check. The advice: Go to the bank, hold up two fingers and a thumb and say “this is a hold up, give me the money”. I was sent to get him back – “he’ll do it” he said.


Now a manager (character two) on the project was not happy because the feed in the Aerial 6 building was not secured at the top – with rods (this room is 2 stories high). A rigger was dispensed to do the job. A week later this manager is still not happy (not a person to upset – if you get my meaning), the feed is still not secured. The rigger protests (a character himself – three characters in this story), he was asked to secure the feed and he did. Well the securing rods are still loose. If the rods were tightened and now, they are loose, it can mean only one thing, 350 tonnes of aerial on top, are collapsing the roof. The manager - horror, panic, datums were set up, measurements by the hour ensued. Temperature inside and out measured. It was pointed out there were three aerials at Madley of similar design. So, measurements were done there as well, on the hour, every hour, for days and weeks. Meetings were held. Suits came to site to inspect the problem.




Goonhilly 6



A Feed Riser fixing rod.



Many weeks later we had suits on site again going to the aerial.


“Who are they” I inquired of person one (remember him – I started with him).


“They are here because of the collapsing roof” he said.


I enquire – “you understand the civils on this build, do you think the roof is coming down”?


“Robin” he says “those columns are 40 newton concrete, there is as many tonnes of steel in them, of course not.”


“So’s what’s the problem” I enquire.


“It’s obvious” he says. “…….. ..…… never tightened the bloody bolts.



In 1959 I started as a first-year pupil (nowadays called “Year 7”!) at West Hatch Technical High School which had opened only one year earlier. It was a new school that embraced a progressive outlook on education with a first class staff across the classic “3Rs” as well as bringing together top flight engineers and craft folk to set what was to prove to be a leading standard for future pupils.


It didn’t do the ‘59ers too badly either – amongst whom was a girl called Margaret Sage. Margaret was the daughter of a builder and she liked to build things. So, when it came to setting the timetables for our first year, Margaret persuaded the staff that she’d be better suited to Technical Drawing than Needlework. This was a talking point amongst us all and we welcomed “Maggie” into the world of “boy’s toys” in the engineering workshops.


The West Hatch ‘59ers eventually left school to take up careers in the great wide world of work and we generally lost sight of one another as we went our separate ways. But, clearly, Maggie was destined to become an Engineer – it’s strange the way things work out!


This is a story of surprise, coincidence and an innocent remark that caused grown men to collapse in uncontrollable hysterics.


Scroll forward to the mid-seventies. I had completed a student apprenticeship, been headhunted to teach at Leafield Training school (where we were the first school in the world to deliver training on satellite systems) which introduced me to a long term love of Goonhilly Aerial No 1 that was our “demonstration model” and was a lowly manager in the satellite operations group with special responsibility for digital systems - which included the digitalisation of services through GHY1 on which I was required to conduct a three monthly technical audit.


At its inception into service Goonhilly was state of the art and all precautions to keep the environmental atmosphere clean were taken – including the provision of a revolving entrance door. On one of my visits, as I entered the door to go in - someone else was coming out whom I thought I recognised. No, surely not, but could it be? Yes! it was Maggie. Clearly, she too was in the same state of Deja vu and we both did a complete 360° turn - and were about to go around again - but I stepped out and Maggie shortly emerged back inside the building. It was a joyous re-union but focussed on the here and now with both of us quizzing the other on why we were at Goonhilly.


I explained that I had just arrived to start a technical audit of GHY1, and Maggie explained that she was there to undertake a refit on GHY3 sub reflector and was on her way to brief her team. Before we parted, she said I must join her and her team at the pub that they were staying at in St Keverne - for a drink and supper that evening. So, it was agreed – I would be fed and watered that night - so set about my task of assessing GHY1.




Goonhilly 1



Access to the Maser Cabin



When it was first deployed for access to Telstar (and that’s another story!) the satellite would only be visible above the horizon for 2 hours in every eight moving from West to East. So, there was no floor in the antenna cabin. Instead you used strops to gain a foot hold as the antenna could be pointing at any angle of elevation. When my day’s work was done, I took a station Land Rover to my digs, cleaned myself up and drove to St Keverne. After brief introductions we got straight to business as Maggie ordered beers for us all. There was little or no small talk, I was still blissfully unaware of what Maggie had been up to since our school days and when Mike Newell asked me how I’d got on in Aerial one’s antenna cabin, I described to him that “it was like standing up in a Hammock”. The whole group fell silent; anxious glances were flashed from one to another and there was a lot of sniggering and men burying their noses into pint glasses with tears in their eyes. Mike Newell broke the silence by saying “I thought you two knew each another? Roger, meet our new boss – Margaret Hammock”.


I’d no idea she’d changed her name!



Post Office Stores, Post Office Storemen and the Rate Book.


Now you need to understand that there are many departments (Groups) on an Earth Station. We had a Steering Group, an SHF (Super High Frequency) Group, a Power Group, a Rigging Group, a Direct Labour Group (DL Group) and Groups named from their location, the Workshop, East Wing and West Wing. We had Drawing Offices and Secretarial Offices and Management of course. Groups had their own identities and quirks, no more so than the Stores.


Now Post Office Stores are a breed apart. No amount of training could prepare you. In my early days you could be sent to Stores for a box of OBN’s (OBN stood for Out of Band Noise and was a measurement, not an item). The Storeman would pore through the Rate Book (we will come on to that) in vain looking for this item – this fool’s errand, for which you have been sent was a joke set for the unwary, in part because they knew the stores culture and the resulting chaos likely to ensue.


Now on going to the store it was usual for anything that you needed to be passed to you through a small hatch around 3ft square. The Stores itself was hallowed ground; on one occasion when the storeman refused to accept they had, what I could see, I attempted to enter to be told. “This is not Tesco’s you know; you can’t wander around picking up what you want”. On the question of having an item. I once went into the Madley Earth Station Store for a Yellow bulb. The bulb was for the end of suite alarm, which is an extremely common item. The storeman would not accept my demand for a Yellow, 24V 20W, end of suite alarm bulb, and a sample dead bulb – he required the Rate Book number. This is not printed on the item.


Horror of horrors - The Rate Book. This huge loose-leaf book normally set on a stand would have all the Post Office (BT) numbers of many thousands of items stocked by Post Office Stores. To this day a pair of 5” pliers to any BT Engineer is a pair of 81’s (actually I don’t believe even the Rate Book refers to them as pliers 81 in its later incarnations). A No.1 screw driver is the smallest one in your kit. Ordering items from the Rate Book could be a hazardous affair. I ordered 3 crow bars (I required a jimmy bar apparently) to open creates. A crow bar in the Rate Book is huge (some 5ft long), fortunately I was able to give them to the Riggers – Rate Book Items are not returnable. Now on one occasion wire dispensers were required. Instead of putting a broom handle through a reel of cable on a chair, x3 proper units were ordered. Many weeks later a low loaded artic appeared at the gate. On board x3 trailers designed to dispense the cable from 20ft drums for people putting cables in the road – you can’t return Rate Book items!


Maybe you would like a tool box referred to in the Rate Book (obscure as ever) as Box Red No.3. We needed several for people on the group. Only the ones we already had, were yellow. Enquiries revealed that indeed you could have yellow. You just ordered on the Rate Book Box Red No.3 (Yellow). Weeks later x3 Yellow Telephone boxes (Kiosks) turn up at the main gate on a lorry – you can’t return Rate Book items. To this day there is a yellow telephone box at the Fire Alarm Muster point (see photo). There have been many examples on site of mistakes made ordering stuff from the Rate Book, because of the obscure numbering and descriptions. Prices didn’t help much either, because items were ridiculously cheap, no doubt priced in the middle ages!


Actually, staff in the Stores were really nice people as with the other groups. But, you must understand the culture. On my first ever visit to the Rigging group, I was told “and you can F off for a start” at first sight. I was a 16-year-old apprentice. My boss wanted to know if I had got what he sent me for. I said no, he told me to F off. And….. “Well” I said “I f’ed off”.




One of the Box Red No. 3 (Yellow)........



......Used as the Fire Muster Control Box



Seeing the GHY 6 site picture in Robin’s tales (#4) of Undocumented Incidents, it reminded me of the story of a feature at the Goonhilly site which is now taken for granted…


What is a rowing boat doing in the middle of the site? This has the taste of the old James Burke TV series “Connections” which was on about that time.


It started when British Telecom had decided to increase security on its sites throughout the UK, part of which leads to another story for the future. Goonhilly had been fitted with a manned Gatehouse at the entrance set back from the road, and a security perimeter fence installed. At the time, the powers that be decided that because of the restrictions on entry, it would be a good idea to hide the site buildings visibly from the road, as they were worried that tourists might stop along the road to look at the site, causing traffic problems, so they decided that something had to be done to screen the complex from view along the perimeter near the road.


However, some consideration had to be made to the aesthetics of this, as the whole of the Goonhilly Downs wild area had come under the administration of English Nature and the aim was to minimise the natural impact of the commercial operations of the site on the wild downs. The Station Manager of the time was one of those people who would try to get something beneficial out of any situation, so the idea of a raised bank of earth along the roadside which would easily naturalise came into formation. One problem, was the need to get earth from somewhere to do this, which, if transported to the site by road from elsewhere would be expensive and cause a lot of likely hold-ups whilst it was being delivered and laid out.


A creative solution was come up with, as an area of land close to the offices, which had previously been used for temporary contractor buildings. It was decided to use the area as a cost-free source of earth, with necessary transportation then being purely “on-site” a distance of ~1200 ft. The resultant hollow in the ground left when the earth was removed formed part of another plan to create a recreational feature for personnel in their breaks as a decorative pond area, and remote senior management were persuaded that the feature could double as a water catchment area to provide a fire-fighting resource in case a building fire ever occurred. Liner material was obtained and the final contouring completed before water was fed into it. Everything went well, and the newly formed pond is shown in Robin’s picture in his #4 article.


A few days later, there was consternation (and perhaps amusement for some!), as what looked like a “whale hump” appeared in the centre of the pond. It was quickly identified as the pond liner which had lifted up to the surface somehow against the weight of water above it. At first it was assumed that perhaps there was air trapped under the liner, and some volunteers donned their diving wet-suits to wade out to the centre to try to move the “air pocket” to the edge, but this became a “pop-up” activity as the bulge refused to go away, and formed in various combinations whatever was tried. This was the period when the loaned rowing boat appeared on “the waves”, and attempts to overcome the “whale” were unsuccessful. Initial attempts to weigh down the hump with bits of local rock, merely rendered the “whale” to look like it was covered with skin blemishes. The problem was finally identified as the water table of the Downs was almost at the surface normally, higher than the intended pond level, and rain had caused water to drain into the ground under the liner causing the middle to lift. The centre area was weighted down with larger concrete slabs, which finally evicted the “whale”, and, in places, also provided bases for a number of water fountains.




The Established Pool With Fountains



Although they worked impressively for some time, they became difficult to service, costly to run and far from impressive, so, at a later date, the fountain idea was abandoned leaving the pond to naturalise.


The pond has always proven quite popular lunch and break times with people meeting up in the small seating area or on the grassy areas around it. Fish were introduced, and more wildlife began appearing. The plants laid out in garden areas around the pond slowly established making it a pleasant area for breaks or just stretching legs after a session in offices. Today it is a little overgrown in places, but is still a nice place to go on a sunny day.



I worked at Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station from 1974 as an apprentice to 2016 as a level 2 manager when I retired.


Presently GES (Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd) are doing a great deal of work to Aerial 6 in preparation for Deep Space Operations – I would refer you to their Web Site https://www.goonhilly.org/ . It reminds me of when the Aerial was built in the 80’s and a couple of tales from that time. In the course of my time at Goonhilly of course there were times when things did not go to plan. Things go wrong, while funny now at the time they were anything but. I have recounted a few such incidents below.


Major outages – it was the purpose of the Station to provide uninterrupted services to its customers via Satellite. Disruptions, can be very expensive. If you were for example to turn off an entire aerial system then the many 1000’s of telephone calls that were being carried at that time would be cut off. They produced a chart showing how long it takes before the traffic levels recovered, obviously when the service was re-established those 1000’s of people would not instantly go back on line, all having by then hung up.


I was working on an MDF (Main Distribution Frame) in the main control room (OCA). I was soldering wires onto a block. These wires carried control and monitoring information from Goonhilly’s Aerial 6 which was a new aerial only recently gone into service; it was and is today the largest antenna on the site. I still remember today the pin numbers 25a and 25b, I placed the wires on the pins and was about to solder them when I got a spark. Now that was not supposed to happen. I checked again, whoops one row out.


I set about wiring them on the correct pins when I get a call, “Robin, your boss is on the phone and wants to talk to you”.


“Robin what are you doing” he says.


“Wiring tell-backs for Aerial 6 in the OCA” I say.


“Well stop doing that” he says “you have switched the entire aerial's traffic to load thereby losing the service”.


Now I must tell you, in the reception was a board, every month they would amongst other information put the Stations efficiency for the previous month. This board was the most boring titbit of information going, always reporting the Station efficiency as 99.8 or 99.7 or even 99.9. That month it was in the 80’s and guess who was responsible?

______________________________________________________________________


Not all problems are accidental, sometimes it’s the consequences of an action that are not foreseen. I had a clerk of work role in the building of Aerial 6. The Prime Contractor was Marconi but the aerial itself was being built by Mitsubishi. We had a very good relationship with the Japanese subcontractor but differences in culture can take their toll. Well into the build Mitsubishi decided to place their Company flag on the Earth spike at the highest point on the structure.


Now our riggers who were also heavily involved in the build saw this as a bit cheeky, so they pushed the flag to the bottom of the spike and put the Union Jack above it. This must have been sometime late in the day. The next day the Japanese are nowhere to be seen. They are in their site hut and are not coming out. We have no idea what is going on. The Japanese are punctual, things tend to happen when they say they will. The day passes. Apparently, they are in meetings. Late in the afternoon they are ready to start work, most of the day has been lost. Why were they in their office, why have we not been testing, what has been going on? Well, we were on really good terms with the guys doing the work. It was the flag.





GHY 6 Under Construction



The Flags



Moving their flag had caused havoc, meetings resulted in the highest levels in the Mitsubishi Company. So….. well it turns out, that since we did not actually remove their flag and because our flag is a National flag and their flag is a Company one, it was decided that this was OK. I don’t think BT was even aware of the incident. To this day I don’t believe our management know how close we got to a diplomatic incident, not to mention the potential for disruption to the project.



A rather strange occurrence during the beginning of Goonhilly operations was found on security cameras. Whilst men were going about their normal preparations below in the equipment areas, two men appeared in black suits and dark glasses in the control tower. They spoke to no-one, monitored activity on the antenna, then disappeared without a word. Who were these men in black? Where did they come from? Where did they go to? What was their interest? Perhaps we will never know………​​



Interlopers in the Tower



Who were these men?



With all the recent talk in the satellite industry of the “new age” of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations in space, it reminded me that we had already “been there, done that” as Telstar I & II were intended to be the first of a constellation of LEO satellites. On 11th July 2002, it was the 40th Anniversary of Goonhilly’s beginning, and so it was decided to hold a special open day event commemorating it for employees, their families, and visitors. A lot was planned, and people who had been based at Goonhilly were to be given a special commemorative CD covering many of the different aspects of life and their colleagues there. I, as the volunteer historian, and a number of other colleagues at the time were tasked to compile the information.


​



Commemorative CD



Goonhilly 1 at Zenith



During the preliminary discussions of the day, I suggested that as we had started operations here tracking the Telstar satellite, it might be an interesting afternoon event on the day to drive Goonhilly 1 along a typical Telstar tracking pass so that everyone could get the feel of how the 870 ton antenna moved with the faster moving low orbit satellites. Bearing in mind that from 1965 onwards, all the antennas were almost stationary normally locked on to geostationary satellites with a maximum elevation angle of about 30 degrees, and the only large excursions were in Azimuth when moving to work a different geostationary satellite region, the then Operations Manager, Alan, was, at the time, reticent to move the structure much higher in elevation as it hadn’t been moved that high for many years.


To my surprise on returning from an off-site trip a few days later, I became aware that Goonhilly 1’s dish was now pointing skywards to zenith (straight up!), possibly the first time since construction. I made enquiry on arrival, and found that it had been decided to try to perform a Telstar track, providing that the mechanics of the antenna was working to the vertical limit OK. With trepidation, then, the antenna had been carefully driven to the vertical limit without problem, but there was a partially expected side effect which had to be safeguarded against. All personnel were prohibited from being close to the antenna whilst it was being driven – a prudent safety procedure – and as the elevation increased there was a slow rain of empty paint tins, brushes, small bits of hardware, and mislaid tools falling to the surrounding apron, left over from routine maintenance work on the superstructure over the years. Fortunately no lost Antenna Maintenance team (the Riggers) members fell out either!


It reinforced the BT safety requirement that people working around or on the large antennas should always be wearing safety helmets under normal conditions, and should always keep away from the open areas around antennas when major movements were being executed. Having tested the operation a number of times, and with the ceasing of falling items, it was decided to go ahead with the demonstration on the day, with the condition that the surrounding apron was prohibited from public access at all times.




The Author (Right) with a Work Team



The Antenna Steering Team was asked to program a simulation pass, and they successfully convinced the antenna to operate as required. Later on I found out that even following a low orbit satellite at normal speed for a tracking pass the antenna movement was barely perceptible, so the drive speed had been increased to make the operation more impressive for the watching crowd. On the day, the pass was announced and it proved to be very popular with the watchers. In fact, it was so popular, the pass was executed again later in the afternoon, rounding off a very pleasant day.


It might also be of interest that the Telstar I & II satellites, although now inactive, are still orbiting the Earth, and the occasional daily sky track referenced to your own location can be found on the web-site www.heavens-above.com maintained by Chris Peat and hosted by DLR, the German Space Operations administration.



Going back to a time when social distancing had not been heard of, travel was easy and Apollo 50 celebrations were imminent, I found myself driving to a familiar place but somewhere I had not visited in quite a while… Goonhilly.


As head of the Satcoms Innovation Group (SIG) at the time, I was on my way to meet with the people behind the Goonhilly Earth Station Limited (GES) in February 2019. The main reason was to start arranging our 2020 workshop being sponsored by GES for May the following year, however I must confess I was also keen to get back and stand in awe at the impressive site. GES had just become a member and the workshop was to showcase the work we do and the innovative resurgence of activity at Goonhilly. Talk of deep space missions, data centres, and a heady mix of technology, all with space at its heart.


This visit was also to become a new start for our group to engage with students from local schools, something that had been on our agenda for some time with only limited success.


2019 for Goonhilly was also a very special anniversary. July of that year marked the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, with which Goonhilly played an important part, earning it a special place in history. Of course, its most famous landmark both physically and emotionally for commercial space operation was the antenna system Goonhilly 1, affectionally known as “Arthur” since the 1990’s. “Arthur”, once the largest satellite dish in the world and named after King Arthur, signalled the dawn of the commercial space age working to Telstar in 1962. Then helped beam images of the 1969 Moon landing to millions of homes around the world. This antenna was the grandfather of everything ‘antenna’ we take for granted today in space communications.





IEEE Plaque



Goonhilly 1



Just to note, the great grandfather of parabolic dish antennas was of course the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in the UK, used for radio astronomy. But that is another story of how Arthur was conceived 😊


My passion for space started back in 1978 when I was being trained in operations at Madley Earth Station. It was brought into service in the September of that year by The GPO (what is known as British Telecom (BT) these days). For me, it was amazing to revisit an iconic site that first captured my interest at the very beginning of my career. Amazing weather certainly made it even better. My time at BT saw me working with a great team of people until I left in the early nineties. They were truly at the cutting edge of satellite operations and technology.


And what is best about all of this?


Some members of that team are still at it but now keeping the historical record of the site and its technology alive and well. They are the Goonhilly Heritage Society (GHS) and I had been given a special invitation to present to the group at their weekly Thursday afternoon meeting.


The day just got better…


With meetings done and the beginnings of a workshop in place and, to my surprise, a formal invite to the July Apollo 50 celebrations as well as working on a “Dragons Den” team event for local schools it was time to visit GHS!


First, what a welcome.


Second, wow, talk about stepping back in time from what I saw of GES’s plans to then see working examples of equipment that I used to work with many years ago and all that enthusiasm needed to make the society viable with the commercial pressure around them. Remember, Goonhilly is not just GES, it still has a BT presence, mainly for the fibre head-end of a major international sub-sea cable and of course, it is also home to Avanti’s satellite operations.


Having spent a great afternoon with the group, that generated so many stories past and present. From how they helped rescue the site from total demolition, the historic archive of information and equipment associated with Goonhilly and its Microwave Workbench (pictured) and education programmes including Star and satellite trekking activities. We also discussed working on a mentoring syllabus for GES staff and their plans for the Apollo 50 event.



The Microwave Workbench



To conclude, I now help-out where I can with the GHS team. It is now an academic member of SIG and has helped with my work with my local school here in Shaftesbury.


With COVID-19 causing its chaos we decided that if we can’t have visitors then we must get the stories out. This article is the start of a series of stories all based around Goonhilly’s history and future.


The team look forward to bringing you more “Tales from the Dishes” over the coming months that will hopefully be educational and interesting but with a view to everyone having a light-hearted read about our satellite industry to get a sense of the real history behind the technology.



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