Other Q-6 tales

Noted trencher-man and transmitter technician George Allan has his on-duty meal delivered to FPQ-6. Serving him (left to right) are Frank Vinton, Colin Forbes, Nola Meiklejohn, and Geoff Goddard. Photo - George Allan

Standing by for the next spacecraft acquisition. ??, Mike Burgess, Ken Anderson (standing) , and ?? Photo - George Allan

Bob Hocking remembers one Musketball track particularly well: email to PD, 06 March 2007

"I had only two techs on my shift; they shall remain unnamed.

The calibration and bore-sight checks were complete and we were waiting for AOS. Suddenly there was a flash and a loud bang followed by a clatter of contactors as the whole radar shut down. A shocked tech emerged from the receiver section. His face was black and he was still clutching a pair of pointed nose pliers now about an inch shorter than they had been. I asked him what he had been doing.

It turned out he had decided to replace a voltmeter on the load centre panel. As he reached around the back of the panel with a nut gripped in the pliers he had shorted one of the few circuits in the radar not protected by a local circuit breaker. The main critical power breaker had tripped. I won't repeat my comments.

I raced downstairs and reset the breakers. The Q-6 did the right thing by us and we supported the track OK. The guy was quite upset, he couldn't understand my objection to his doing non-urgent maintenance at such a critical time."

Ken Anderson remembers the same technician: email to PD, 06 March 2007.

Len Algate arrived back at CRO as the Chief Engineer and, of course, was touring around the station. When he arrived at Q6 I took him on the 2/6 tour. When we got to the antenna I opened the doors to show him the ‘new’ paramps [new since his days as FPQ-6 Site Engineer]. I was surprised/mystified by the presence of a 6" file, [lying] loose in the cabinet. Needless to say I removed it.

For some time prior to this event we'd been having problems with the system noise figure, which would be OK for a day or so then plummet to unacceptable level. The receiver "tech" [same guy who was responsible for Bob's "mishap"] would be asked to replace the mixer diodes, the noise figure would now be OK, only to fail miserably again [the next day]. So, I one day asked him to bring the diodes he removed to me. It was late in the afternoon and I just put them on my desk. When I arrived next morning I picked them up and nearly fell over when I realised that the tips of all of the diodes had had 50 to 60 % removed, very coarsely, with a file. [These diodes were extremely sensitive to static electricity and there were strict instructions as to their handling, in order to protect them] I asked the receiver guy, "Would you explain to me how these diodes came to be filed?" His reply was, “I will not speak to you when you question me like that." My blood pressure immediately disappeared through the roof, and my memory of the event includes the sight of Bob Hocking, my 2 i/c disappearing between two cabinets. After this was all over I asked Bob why he'd disappeared and he replied, "You were so angry I thought you were going to hit him. I just got out of the way so I could say to any subsequent inquiry that I didn't see what happened."

It turned out that ... [the culprit] being so ham-fisted... had found the diodes difficult to insert into their holders and had taken the 'easy' way out.

Needless to say the culprit was transferred to an area where he could do less harm.

Tony Green remembers the fun Q6 had teasing the NRL team looking for water vapour in space: email to PD, 11 April ‘05

After initial trials confirming sources in the Southern sky that had already been detected from the Northern Hemisphere, we settled down to a steady routine of searching for new Southern sources. To do this, the scientist had to enter the right ascending node and the elevation into the terminal (Teletype machine) and the computer would then direct the antenna to the area to search. If the scientist made three wrong entries (which they did all the time) the teletype would print out ‘Roses are red and violets are blue, that’s not a star I can take you to – Dummy. Please enter right ascending node and elevation’.

In spite of this stirring message the scientists persistently made input errors, so an evil plan was hatched.If the scientist had received three of the above messages, another message was printed out which read ‘Do you want to track stars or just f**k around?’ The first time this message was printed out was on a night shift; the scientist who received it went ballistic and set off running laps around the Q6 in a fit of absolute rage. This gave time for all of the evidence to be removed and his printouts replaced by ones without the offending line. We all received a real dressing down for that one!

Perhaps this ‘fun’ was why Dave Gardiner’s elegant solution to the problem was never used by the team (see following note)

Bob Hocking reports: email to PD, 13 February 2007
[The] … Right Ascension and the Declination of a star was entered into the thumbwheels and the Digital Designate button pressed, whereupon the star appeared bang in the centre of the cross-hairs on the TV monitor...