MISCELLANY

Racal In Africa A Tribute to Horace Dainty MBE (1916-2006) by Bria,z Austin, GOGSF

In May 1972, Ernest (now Sir

Ernest) Harrison, the Chairman of Racal, announced some senior man­

agement changes within his compa­ny's South African operation. Horace Dainty, Managing Director since its

inception would become Chairman

of Racal Electronics South Africa. He would be succeeded as MD by

David Larsen, previously Technical Director and the n1an responsible for so many highly innovative technical

advances made over the previous

twenty years. Those South African

contributions (of which the Wadley receiver was perhaps the best known)

had enabled Racal International to

reach its dominating position, partic­

ularly in the world of military mobile communications.

Since then much has happened.

Racal became one of the major elec­

tronics co.mpanies in the world, but is no more having been swallowed up

by Thomson CSF to become Thales.

Soud1 Africa, too, bas undergone

massive changes. Its electronics

industry is thriving but that is no new phenomenon. Its origins, and the very

origins of such an industry anywhere on the continent of Africa, are trace­

able to 1935 and die opening of the

country's frrst radio factory in Johannesburg.

This article is a tribute to the man who started that factory and who

then turned another in Durban into a uniquely inventive electronics

organisation. It was H.orace Dainty's

drive, dedication, courage and fore­

sight that fostered some of the most

rernarkable developments in radio communications in Soud1 Africa,

and whieb then facilitated such a

fruitful coUaboration with Racal in

England.

Early Days In Natal

Horace Dainty was born in Natal,

d1at mosl British of the South African provinces, on 6 March 1916. His

father, also Horace, haled frorn

Easton on d1e Hill, between Leicester

and Peterborough, which he left as a

young man to make his fortune in

South Africa. There be was known as

Captain Dainty following his service

in the Boer War as the adjutant of

Kitchener's Fighting Scours, an irreg­

ular outfit o:f 1nounted infantry under

the command of the far.nous bunter and so.rnetim.e soldier, Lt Col J W

Co.lenbrauder. The young Horace Dainty faced

formidable challenges. By the age of

13 he was orphaned and was Left with no means of support. He abandoned

his schooling and started work at the •

The Mars Manufacturing C1ompany in Jaha,nnes,b1urg in1 1938 with Hora,ce Dainty ,seated in the centre and Boris Wilson in the dark su'it to hiS' righ1t

Durban North Es'tate ,, a hott' ing con1-pa.ny� oa a alary of £Si p r 1n nth.

Ther h - worked in the ffice wher be became fa1niliar with bookk· . ping� as -i ,t d th - nut. _ ryman and I rd r d ma erials for th h 1rdwnr tor, � In later life h wa iv n to 1claimi.ng that so many of his achi, v m._ nts w _ r du ju. l to, luck. But n1nking on ,wn luck always ha much mor L d with

it and l-1 1 J'ace Dainty c rtain[y mad hi. - ofL .. n wh n th · odds , · m d stack d again · L him.

10n _ � tr ik I f normou� 010d for­tun occun"'ed in hi early life wh -n h­was foster d by Reg ripp an a i -tanl n1anager al the tat � con1pany, and a n1an f gr al hu1nanity� ripp \Va a highly a· , n1pli.h d mod 1-makei and , on H Jae beca1n pret­ty ad_ pl at th latll a11d at th1 w rk-b nch. Th n ripp d cid. d l

ex, hang his mod l-n1aking -quip­ment for a 1 0111 ction of an1aleur radio gear own. d by a friend and arde11t

an1at ur radio I p rator Taffy Bo,yc, , Z SCJ. ry tal s ts oon gav way to

'TRF r _ c iv r a11d not long aft r ti . uperhet·, which th young Horac, was . oon designing hi ms_ [f. H1" n1ade up for his lack of forma1 training by enrollin,g on a corr�spond nee course

at the Wi.twatersrand Technical

4

1Co1Jege in Joh�1nne--burg. o n th lo al � .'di a1nal ur r, gard1_ d him a , ,o,m hing o1 n e _p rt.

Th n 1caJamjcy , Lruck a th_ G at D1epre · ion of 193 l took haild. Th

.., tat1 ompany* al.on with many olher bu ine , aero Durban

d and hundr d , of men . ,_re out f \V rk. 1-lorac, Dainty, n · , f th

y una . t,, wa. to . To arn a e, , bob� h _ pr du ed a 1ni lure f wood� t in and b wax whi h h �- id as _ r . tor r f w od a 11 ior ,. Tb n one

duy h · und a job witb · atal Motor lndu tri. , � nd wa\, assigned to a .. j, t th _ work h ,p f I"eman. harging bn.L­

l1- ri �&' and r _ pairing armature · __ ,o n

b am_ hi · 1ne.t ier .. ln 1932 h_ w;i ff" r d a job at lhe

Rndm1 El ctr � quipment C' mpany (Ply) Lld. Thi wa- Durban� n1y whole. al - , upp]i r of radl I compo­

nenL and pare., and ir wa a place that l1orac kn w \rV 11 a· an . cca. i n­al cust0imer when the p nnie w uld tretieh lhal far. A he wrot · v 111y

year later, it wa truly his1 h aven on 1 arth� Settling in quickly, be oon becam. · fan1iliar whh the complete range or components whil1e, at the ame tim ., hi , confidence grew as a

l,echn.ical adviser to those who used them ..

Though ju t hort f hi._ · _ v nt enth birthday� lhi.. v ry l f. uffici nt young man oon di p1ay _ d judg1 m nit and maturil r that b lied hi ag_ � Th o

P rln1an, hi bo � noticed thi , too and d cided to take a ga1nble. Hi, branch in J. hanne� burg bad ju ·1t Jg l it. man ... ag r nd finding a su itabl r pla _ ... m nt hadn l been I a. y., h offi d th _ p .. ition t t-1 rac ., in e he haid n· ti _ al all lh y ung Dainty . 1 -pl ... ,_d and l g ther he and P,erlman (1 ft f r J hanne"" burg v1.1ithin ju I · n-" •

d,a � One_ tb r , P rln1an found bim

nc,_ 1m1nodati1 n in a boarding hou .• h w _d hhn th , 1 ck and the H 'l f

, u "tom rs .. Within, h u Mr Pedman wa n hi · w y ba k Lo Durban and

H ra _ Dainty w ·, n1:i11ag r f hi own bu .in ,,

or t,vo year Hotac ran tb ho\V

in J · hanne. burx, vi, iling 1_ u t1 m r acr · � the length and br adth of Tb R ef, that ridg of low-lying hill ·ni

nam d b cau" ,e f the abundanc , of

.gold that loy ben ath them.. Radio broadcasting c ·1mmenc d in South Afri.cn in 1924 and a. radio r1epair industry follow_ d �oon after� Mo t of

the vaJves u ed in the et�I wer1e

supplied by the Arcrw·us Co1npany i1t the United States, ,vbicb Horace rep­resented, and be soon reaJised that be could also offer a radio repair service.

This brought bin1 to the attention of a Dr Sidley, a scientist whose family ran a large chen1jcal cotnpany in the city. The Sidleys were aware that there was no radio 1nanufacturing industry in South Africa and being industrialists, they believed that they could set i t up as long as they could find the rigJ1t man to run it.

Dr Sidley approached Horace Dainty in 1 935. He believed that wire­less sets covering the mediun1 a.nd sl1orl wavebands would be much in demand because the local Listeners were very partial to broadcasts fro1n the BBC, as well as fro.in their l.ocal station. Horace agreed a11d convinced Dr Sidley that he could design and manufacture such a receiver using tuners rnanufactured by the F W Sickles Company of Massachusetts. Working at night and throughout the weekends he produced two receivers that met a11 Sidl.ey's require1nents, and at a cost that would allow a reasonable

The 150W transmitter (left) in its rack-and-panel style developed for the SAAF

The rear view (above) of the 150W transmitter

profit tnargin whe11 con1pared with the iinported sets then on saJe in South Africa. The Mars Manufacturing Con1pany soon came into being wilh Horace Dainty as its chief engineer. He was just 19.

Between 1935 and J 937 Dainty established the first radio n1anufactur­ing business in South Africa a1nongst the n1ine dumps south of Johannesburg. He built, by hand, the wooden workbenches to acco.mmo­date the sets as they progressed along Iris ·production Vine' while his 'devel­opment laboratory' was enclosed in cl1icken wire as a precaution against interference. He hired and trained staff, including worn.en to act as assemblers.

He als.o engaged, as his sal.esn1an, a re1narkable young n1an of 18 by the natne of Boris Wilson whose life to date had already involved selling fruit, insurance and chocolates while also studying part-tune at the University of the Witwatersrand. In the years to con1e, Wilson qualified as a medical doctor an.d was eJecred to the South African ParLiament where he became

one of the 1nost strident opponents of apartheid.

Horace and Boris soon realised there woutd be a ready n1arket for a radiogra1n and they sketched a suit­ably stylish unit based on the new Garrard auton1atic turntable and lbe original radio that Dainty bad. des.igned. The cabinets in walnut or bird·s-eye map.le were 1nade within the factory. Their pe1fonnance and appearance were exceJl.ent and Boris Wilson was a most effective sales1nan.

By d1e end of l 937 he and the Mars M.anufacturing Co1npa11y had sold n1ore than I OOO of their Viking radi­ograms across the length and breadth of South Africa, but for all that things were not well within t.l1e coJ11pany. The business had always suffered from a cbro11ic lack of capital, while both Dainty and Wilson were findu1g it very hard to co1ne out on theu· salaries of twelve pounds ten shillings a 1nonth. The Sidleys were clearly 1101

tnaking a go of their radio 1nanufac­turing business and within a 1natter of tno11ths they announced its closure. Horace itnm.ediately returned to

RADIO BYGONES No. 106, April/May 2007 5

Durban and Bori 1 • Wilson re umed h i peripatetic career.

Back ln1 'Durban

Back i n Durban Horacie Dainty found that Mr Perlman ,s Radio Electro-Equipment ,company rather in the doldnuns. Other supplier· of com­ponents. had opened up aroun.d the country and the pace of competi tion was qujckening.. There wa· c l early a need to div,er. i fy in to manufacturing and i l clid_n ' t lake P,erlman Jong Lo

real i _ e who cou Id n1ake that happen, · o h persuaded Horace to take over Lb company.

Recent event· in Johannesburg had taught the entrepreneur in Dainty tbat \vithout sufficient tinancial underpin­ning he wou ld always be 10n thin ioe .. So he negotiated with hi supplier in the USA and took active , tep� to increase bis working capital by approaching var­ious pos' ible i.nvestor . On the t1echnical ide of things two new areas of manu­

factu1ing now· beckoned: tran, Ii-utters for radio amateu� · and publ ic-addre· ". y tems for all and �· u ndry.

By now Horace had obtained hi

,own amateur rad io ,can · ign (ZS5HT) and wa , a111 acliv m nib r of Lh S uth Africa11 Radio Leagu , lb ARL� The po ibHity f upp.lying impu11,ed

,equ ipment to the ev1 r- increa ing populaU n of rad·io an1at, urs wa. mo. l

attractive. B,ul even mor1e o was. his idea of desi_gning and bu ilding th,e sets himself. So in the ,evertlngs.� ju .. t as he'd done in Johanne burg a few years before ll he made transmittel"; to order based on idea gleaned from th1e ARRL

Handbook and Terman � Radio

E11gi11e·eri11,g. He u ed imported cha .. -sis and cabinets, and bu i l t the equipm,ent in the rack-and-panel , ty ling of the day. They rivalled any pi1ece of imported gear in their prof_ · ional appearan:ce and wo:rked a . wel l too.

Th,_ valve l in_ �u:p was the conven­tional c"Ombination of a 6V6 a,, . cH lator driving an 807 fina] amplifi,er bur ·tber,e wer,e so,me intrere ting bits of originality, too� uch ru the use of an Ohmite tapped inductor in -r._ad of p.lug-in ,coil � making band witching much e·a i r. For tho e wanting bigher power,, Horace al a produced tran' -mit ters w ith ei ther tb 8 1 3 tetrode or the HK54 triod_ in the fina·1 tage,,

Ampl itude modu lat ion rrequ j red appropriate transfo.rm.ers a.nd th Tbodarso,n rangre erv1ed tbe purpo e admirably, a� did Lbeir main� trans­form r. in aU the pow r upplies he built Variable capaci tor {o,r con­den ers a,. they were then) .. dials, .and thei-r dri e n1ech,ani .m' w,ere vital e le­

·m.,ent of the VFO-contro) led tran .. -n1ilter and� l�or aJ I of lhe e. Horace u . . ed the ational Coinpany of Ma � .ach u, eU a� hi., le uppl ier.. Tb y

offer,ed a range of wonderfully crafted 111Velv,et Vernier dials that added , i·gft nificantly to the 1quality of Horac '. craftsman h ip . But recei er re·mained the preserv1e of the prafi ... sionals and .many amateur u ed tb famous National HRO. some of which the Radio Electro-E1gu ipment Company had imported ..

War And Wi. reless

On 6 Sepr n1ber 1 939 Sou th Afri,ca declared war on Germ.any .. It wa by no means a unanimou de i ,ion in Parliam nt a a iz able p.roporUon f tbo _ ligibl · to vo,t_ w_r,_ .troogly opposed to tigbting any ·war on th same _ ide as En.gland. 'Their n1emo­rie were · till bitt. r about event ior1_. years before when th1 Bo, r War and Kitchener' cone ntralion ,camp, c l.aimed the l iv1 of · o man Afrikanier ·. particularly women and c.hildreo. Bul General Smut won th vote by a lender majori ty and South Africa began to n1obiH e.

Horace Dainty bad ili ady exp ri­enreed a l i ttle of the mi l i tary way 1oif L ife when he erv,ed in the '1 atal Mounted R ifle · a an Acti . e 1Cili�en orce ohmteer al lhe b.e.ight ,of Lh

depres io·n . On,e th ing thal truck him then wa lhe pauc i ty of wirele , om ... municat ion· equ ipment with in th Un iun Defence Forc,e� the UD .. -. ol

Fitting out the SAA,F vehicles outside the Ra1dio Electro-Eq,uipmt�nt Co,mp,any in 19,39, with Horace Dafn,ty second from the left.

EVEREADY ... ' ....

SPACE TWIN

• EVEREADY . .. ' .... SPACE CRUISER

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a,wn"' IIISl�S AltO nniu OAU

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The M17 transceiver (above) developed for the Marmon-Herrington armoured cars

A selection of the Eveready portable domestic receivers (right) made by SMD

much had changed since then but now he believed he could do something about it. He also knew that all techni­cal rnatters within the South African Corps of Signals (SACS) were han­dled by the Postmaster General's departn1ent, so he sent a cryptic telegram to the PMG saying simply "Cao n1ake transmitters". A reply came back ahnost immediately requesting hin1 to make a 150W trans­mitter using a master oscillator fron1 2 to l 6Mc/s for communicating with the Royal Navy ships off South Africa's east coast and Horace set about pro­ducing it in double-quick time.

Fortunately, all the necessary com­ponents were in stock and be knew that a pair ofBK54 triodes w.ouJd eas­ily produce the power. The transmitter was built in a rack- a n d -panel configu­ration very similar to the RCA ACT-200, a 200W transmitter intended for the US amateur radio market. Tbe Dainty transmitter was ready well within the six to eight weeks specified by the PMG and soon a S.outh African Air Force (SAAF) Junkers ms2 was winging Horace plus the transmitter to Port Elizabetl1 where they were met by a Post Office engineer plus his wavemeter. Together they set up the

transmitter and calibrated it as care­fully as they could. It soon went into service and tbe Radio Electro­Equipment Company, and more par­ticularly Horace Dainty, had estab­lished themselves as the only local source of wireless transmitting appa­ratus for the war effort.

Things moved quickly after that. Orders came in from the PMG for var­ious small i.tems sucb as heterodyne wavemeters, while the SAAF asked him to produce further transmitters for its ground stations and also to upgrade the receivers fitted to their Anson aircraft - a simple task since the original valves only had a guaran­teed life of twelve hours. There was also a need for a 500W AM transmit­ter to be set up on South Africa's northern border, and business was suddenly booming. What's more, there was talk of a possible contract from the army for semi-portable transmitter-receivers.

Then a phone-call came from Pretoria. A SAAF officer was already in the air and on his way to Durban. Would Mr Dainty please arrange to meet him at Stamford Hill aero­dron1e? To announce his arrival the _pilot had been instructed to fly low

RADIO BYGONES No. 106, April/May 2007

•

. . • . • I • • •

I

along Broad Street where Horace's company bad its pren1ises.

On his arrival the officer bad with him a few pages torn from an RAF maoua.l. These described a set-up consisting of three vehicl.es, one housing two 150W traosrnitters anoth­er, the Signal Office, contained two receivers while the thud was the power supply truck fitted with a peo·ol-driven generator set plus two portable antenna installations. "Could Mr Dainty oblige?" Needless to say, Horace could and he agreed tbere and then even though he had none of the facilities to cope with such a Jarge installation. But luck smiled on him again. The n1unicipality waived aJJ restrictions and the three vehicles were duly parked outside the compa­ny's front door and the road was then closed to au other traffic.

Other Parts

To be abJe to cope with the UDF's requirements while also continuing to run tbe component-supply business meant that Horace needed someone to take over from him 'in the shop'. He therefore employed a young Indian man by the name of Moonsammy

7

Naidoo who quickly became fami l iar with the tock and its purposes.. In t in1e his knowledge of electronic com­ponents wa almo t encyclopaedic and he served Radio Electro­Equipment throughout th,e war while Horace Dainty was serving King and 1Country som what further afield .

Most components for the SAAF order were on hand, but the heavy­duty cables and their couplings to l ink the generator vehicle to the other were hardly ,everyday ite1ns. However� it turned out that Waygood Otis l i ft cable were ideal for the purpose, while the mas: i ve e lectrical connec­tors were suppl i d by the South African Railway from th ir stock of

ucb thing,s. The nece , ary receiver were requi i t ioned fron1 the supply of HROs belonging to radio amateur, that had been sealed by th Post Office radio i n, p,ectors uon after amat ur radio was curtai led when war was declar d,.

Con truction of the tran mitters, bas d on tbe riginal I SOW d ign� went ah ad apace W'h i le the vebicle ,

were fi tted out i n the _ treet ut ide. Local tesident watched with som

fa cination fron1 the flat round and about and pl ied Hor,ac _ and his staff with suppl ie of tea and coffe a th

work w nt 011 w I I into the ni.gbt and ov r we kends. Se urity was provid d

by the local I qujval nl of the Home Guard. The first in. tal lal ion was com­

p1leted on t im and duly del ivered to

tb - docks wh _ re i t I ft for tb AAF Headquarter in K nya from wh re baUl wa b ing jo in d again t

Mussol i n i " fore i n Aby s in ia . F'uttb r "UCb i nstal lations w, r l '"ee ervi I with Lh SAA , quadron'"

operating ri h t a ,ross th M iddl Ea l

fro1n �gypt to Tripol i .

AU in all n ine ets of these vehicle i nsta l lations were delivered t.o the UDF. The vehicle superstructure was fitted by a caravan manufacturer in the town of Standerton in the Transvaal .. Often the lorries were subjected to a bombardment of rocks and tones as they pa sed through certain towns and vil lage on their way to Durban .. If ·any­one had forgotten, that was a reminder that the ,var effort wa . certainly not favoured by al l i n the ,country.

By now it was apparent that meeting

the UDF's requirements necessitated. both ,considerably n1ore finaocia1 sta­bil i ty as wel l as larger premises .. lbe fir t wa a ured when Steele and Matson, a local company representing

m.any of tbe US component upplier ,

provided Dainty with tbe extra finance he needed on favourable terms.. They agre,ed to form a joint company, l inked

their i ni t ials with his� and SMD Manufacturing Company (Pty) Ltd came into being to meet th radio com­

munication need of the UDF. Shortly

afterwards SMD was ac _ 01m11odated in n w and sp,acious premise near the

Durban docks.

M1 7 Radios For The Army

The outh African Army had been rely ing oin the Co l l i n Radio Company in Iowa to meet th_ i r need_ for rad io equ ipm n l for the new

Marn1on-Herrington armoured car being manufactured i n larg quantiti.

around the country. Special provi ion

had already be,en made to accom­modat the 1 l i 11, 1 M lran n1iU r/

r c i �r wh n uddenJy th UD wa inform,ed that th quipm nt �,-a no

long r a ai lable� Imm diat ly" MD er a ·k d if they could upply an

equivalent set with dimension and mountings that matched tho e of the I 8M. Dainty sajd they cou ld and agreed to supply a prototype for test­i ng and approval within ju t a few w,eeks.

The outcome wa. the M l 7 , of which more than 400 W·ent into UDF service. It u ed a 30W AM tran mitter wi th an 807 i n tbe PA while the receiver franc-end was an American tuner that SMD had ordered i n double-quick t ime. A heavy-duty ynchronou v ibrator provided the

required high voltage from the vehicle battiery.

A cri i occurred when the ship car­rying the Vel v1et Verni1er drive and the 350pF variable capaci tors needed for tran mitter and receiver tuning was torpedoed off Durban.. eces ity now required local olution and th,ey were not long in coming. The South African Rai lway· Work hop i n Johanne burg produced uperb repli ... cas of tbe National dial whi le, with the a i tance of a Durban machine shop, SMD manufactured 1 200 vari ... able capacitor . The M 1 7 wa oon in servic wi th the South African Armoured Car regiments that ,er ed with di t inction i n the battle again t Rommel fore 'up North ,,

In Uniform And 'Up North'

By l at 1 942 th Union� D.ir ctorat_ of War SuppH _ had com i nto being and ME>. al n,g with many

other mal I contpani . w re a. k d to

mo e to Johanne burg in order t I on.., ol idat , th ir acti i tie . Horace agre d

and � o he found him'. I f in uth frie::a' big e t ity n _ again,. By

th _ n radi quipm nt was beorinnin

The original TRL prototype (lett) and the SMD version (right) ol the 'Wadley triple-loop receiver that became the Racal ,RA 1 7

8 RADIO B'YGONES No. 106, April/May 2007

Land and Marine k .,,,. S,NGU SIOBAHD

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The RT4228 SSB transceiver and the FSR 26 AM transceiver that were in operation throughout southern Africa in the early 1960s.

to arrive in South Africa from over­seas and bureaucracy in all its guises soon became part of daily life.

After a few months of relative idle­ness be went to see the Director of Signals to request that he be released fro.m his reserved occupation so that he could 'join up'. The Director, Colonel Freddie Collins, agreed and Second Lieutenant Horace Dainty, without the benefit of an officer's course, reported to the l 7 Armoured Brigade Signal Squadron, tben being formed as part of the 6 SA Armoured Division. He was accompanied by many of his staff who were mucb welcomed since competent radio technicians were in short supply. In April 1943 they sailed from Durban for Egypt on board the troopship Isle

de France.

6 Div was based at Kbatatba, near Cairo, wbere intensive training took place over the following twelve months. Horace Dainty, as T & M officer, was responsible for the train­ing of the wireless mechanics in the repair and maintenance of the 300 to 400 WS No19, fitted i n alJ the Division's tanks as we1J as various other pieces of equipment. Had be flown by the book he would've had to send back to 6 Div workshops all damaged sets for repair, but that was

not the Dainty way. Instead he ·acquired' a couple of 3-tonners and set one of them up as tbe radio work­shop and the other, whicb .be fitted with a petrol-generator set, became tbe battery-charging truck. He also bad what he described as a "fine bunch of radio chaps", four of whom bad worked for him in Durban.

Once training of the 6 Div began .in earnest, the various regiments of the ttiree brigades were scattered over a very wide area with signals officers attached to each. Horace himself was supposed to be based at Brigade HQ but because of the nature of the coun­try he located his own HQ and work­shop wherever it was most convenient and so was able to operate almost independently of higher authority. It helped enormously i n having a Divisional Signals Officer (Lt Col W G Perkins) who turned a blind eye as well as Nelson ever did!

fu years to come, after retiring from the Army, Col Perkins would end up working for Horace at Racal South Africa. This mutual trust between them bore fruit in many ways, not least being the effectiveness of the 6 Div's radio communications. By always keeping a number of working No 19s in reserve Horace ensured that

RADIO BYGONES No. 106, April/May 2007

the signallers in the tanks and other armoured vehicles wexe never without working radio sets and, as be later told the author, "our comms at all levels of command were always excellent".

In April 1944, 6 SA Div, now part of the US 5tl1 Army, moved to Italy where, given the mountainous ,nature of the country, it fought with great dis­tinction in the role of motorised iufantry with tank support. Horace Dainty, now Technical Maintenance Officer of 6 Div Sig Sqn plied his trade with dedication and considerable flair.

When Bologna fell to the Allies in April 1945, he happened to find him­self right outside the gates of Marconi's iinp.ressive residence, the Villa Grifone. How he recognised it he wasn't sure when questioned about it sixty years later but he did remember jumping out of his vehicle and collect­ing himself a piece of stone from the driveway as a wireless 1nemento. Another was to come his way too. While awaiting embarkation in Genoa after D Day he was informed that he'd been awarded the MBE.

SMD Back In Action

Once demobbed in March 1946, Dainty took immediate steps to bring

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SMD back into full operation. The .com­pany had just been ticking over during the war under the stewardsl1ip of Jack Matson and Moonsammy Naidoo. South Africa, as elsewhere, was suffer­ing from a shortage of foreign currency as weU as severe import restrictions. A £ 1250 goverrunent loan to returning ex­servicemen bolstered his capital while Horace po·ndered his next move.

He teamed up with a colleague who'd made s1naU power transformers before the war and they then extended the operation to include fluorescent light ballasts. Both soon became prof­itable ventures as South African indus­try readjusted to peacetime production and Utis soon required a new factory -employing 1nore than 300 people in titne to come - which Jack Matson built in Pinetown near Durban.

Horace then considered making domestic radio receivers. As non­essential items their importation was by no 1nea11s a priority and local radio suppliers were running out of stock. SMD therefore stepped in and set up an assembly Une to 1neet U1eir individ­ual require1nents. One of his fiJ·st cus­tomers was Boris Wilson who, amongst many other activities, was selling radios agaiJ1.

The fu·st transistors appeared in the mid-J 950s and were soon used in audio a1nplitiers and other low fre­quency applic�tions. The bulk of the design work was undertaken by David Larsen who had joined the company as an apprentice in 1952. Subsequently SMD produced a range of portable radios and accessories under the Eveready and other name­plates and hw,dreds of thousands were sold throughout southern Africa. Pri_nted circuit boa:rd n,anufacture, the silk screening of dials as well as the first flow soldering plant in South Africa all followed in short order. These developments laid the founda­tion for SMD's move back into designing and manufacturing radio trans1nitters and they opened the way for a n,ost impo1tanL collaboration.

Wadley's Receiver

.At the beginrri ng of this article ref­erence was ,nade to the Wadley receiver that became the Racal RA17. T11is story was very well told within the pages of Radio Bygones (see RB25!26, 1993) by Kei.th Thrower, then Research DiJ·ector of the Racal

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Radio Group Ltd. In the late 1940s whe11 Trevor Wadley was a Senior Research Officer at the CSIR's Tele­coJnmunications Research Laboratory (TRL) ill Johannesburg, he invented what has since become known as the Wadley Loop.

The similarity between the initials TRL and TRE, the Telecommuni­cations Research Establishn1ent in Malvern, England Led Keith, and many others, inadvertently to assume that Wadley developed his ideas whiJst seconded to tbe TRE during tbe war. I pointed. out the error .in a Jetter to tbe editor of RB, published in tbe issue of August/Septe1nber J 994, which also contained Keith Thrower's acknowledgement of that mistake.

In 1950, after the receiver had been patented in South Africa, Wadley took his prototype to England to demon­strate i t to the Ministry of Supply. They showed little enthusiasm, bow­evel·, and directed hiln to Mullard instead where it was viewed with interest but reservations were expressed about its lack of front-end selectivity. Wadley assured then, that this could easily be improved but at the cost of so.m.ewhat more complex.i­ty. Wadley also approached the British Parents Office who produced a patent

issued in 1945 to a French radio group describmg a method of frequency generation that operated on similar principles. However, no further devel­opments had taken place in France nor was the South African patent ever challenged but, for this reason, the Wadley receiver was never parented in Britain .

In the meantime, the BBC bad expressed interest and indicated that they wouJd be prepared to acquire six sets. Thus fortified, Wadley returned home to Sooth Africa to the news Chat the UDF had provided funding for the production of six prototypes with the possibility of an order for a further 100 to follow, if they were produced by a local manufacturer.

lt was with this background that SMD wOJl a tender fro.m the CSlR in 1951 to develop six pre-production versions of tl1e Wadley receiver at a cost of £75

each. These followed the two that Wadley bad 1nade at the NITR and one other made there by an engineer from the South African Post Office. In 1954 Wadley's boss at the TRL, Dr Frartk Hewitt, when on an official visit to England, heard that the Racal company (a name with which he was completely unfamiliar) bad obtained an order from the Royal Navy for 500 receivers to be

The TR28: the world's first HF solid-state SSB manpack

The TR 15H: the world's first HF frequency-hopping military transceiver

RADIO BYGONES No. 106, April/May 2007

based on the Collins 511-1, which rep­resented the state-of-the-art at tJ1at time. But difficulties had arisen between ColLins aud RacaJ and the 5 lJ-1 could not be manufactured in England as orig­inally intended.

Racal was in trouble and were par­ticularly interested to see the Wadley receiver and so Hewitt took one of the TRL 111odels plus one built by David Larsen at SMD to Bracknell. Keith Thrower (in RB25/26) te!Js what hap­pened next. Suffice it to say that Racal soon moved into top gear to tun1 the Wadley receiver into a form acceptable to the Royal Navy. It becrune the famous RA 17.

SSB In Africa

Horace Dainty's wish to get back into the business of designing and manufacturing transmitters was given in1petus following a request from the meteorological office in Mozambique for an AM transmitter. The outcome was the FSR 26, with two 6146s in tbe transmitter: one as tbe 01odulator, tbe other the final, with a solid-state receiver. SimHar orders soon followed from the neighbouring territories of Basutoland (now Lesotho) and Bechuaoaland (now Botswana).

Theo, in 1959, SMD en1barked on a venture that w0uld put tbe111 in the forefront of HF radio communieati.ons when they produced what was possi­bly the world's first commercially available transistorised, filter-type SSB transceiver, the RT422B. With a pair of 6146s in the I OOW linear amplifier it began life, as did so many SMD products, as one of David Larsen's amateur radio projects. This crystal-controlled transceiver was ruggedly housed in two die-cast alu­minium boxes and could be used in either fixed or mobile instaJlations and, 1nost itnportantly, was very sim-

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ple to operate. It was soon in service in Mozambique and the countries of the Rhodesian Federation. By the early 1960s over 600 were in use throughout southern Africa.

In March 1963, Douglas Morrell, the Racal sales director, paid a visit to SMD in Pinetown. He told Horace Dainty that he'd "co,ne to see what sort of operation they were because SMD had effectively put Racal out of business more or less up to the equator". As well as seeing ilie production lines turning out hundreds of domestic receivers per day, he also saw the RT422B and another amateur radio project, a fully transistorised version of the Wadley tJiple loop receiver that bad been designed and built by Ken Clayton ZS5GU and whieb would soon become the RA217 :in England. And undergoing trials was the RTl4 SSB manpack (described by the author in RB93!94,

2005). It was arguably not only ilie world's first SSB 111aopack but it con­tained a unique form of RF speech pro­cessing. lo addition, the broadband cir­cuitry meant that ilie single inductor ATU was the only tuneable element throughout its 2 to 8MHz range.

By May of that year a new company ca111e into being: Racal SMD (Pty) Ltd, with its headquarters in Pretoria. The professional and military com­munications market completely dis­placed domestic receiver production; the RT 14 became the TR28 and went into service with the Portuguese and Rhodesian forces fighting bush wars north of South Africa's borders.

Racal's holdings increased with th.e formation of Racal Electronics South Africa in 1965. The world's fiTst syn­thesized FM/SSB manpack, the SA50X, operating in the 30 to 70MHz range, was taken to an advanced stage of development before being scup­pered, mainly for political reasons to do with the quid pro quos of the .inter­national arms trade. Such dark

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dealings by the country's politicians are another story entirely! The TRJ5, a synthesised, aJJ solid-state HF I OOW transceiver was designed and pro­duced in large quantities and both i.t and the RTl 4ffR28 used the broad­band push-puU, transformer-coupled RF PA topology so farniliar to . us today. 1'hen, just as Horace, Dainty was preparing to retire, the TR 151-1 appeared. It was the world's first fre­quency-hopping HF tTansceiver - a truly world-shattering advance. And be said it was all down to luck!

Colonel Farmer Dainty

When he retired as Chairman in 1976 Horace donned a uniform again as a part-time colonel in the SADF charged with 1narshaUing the coun­try's emergency communications resources. He was prevailed upon to undertake this task by the Director of Telecommunications who saw both tbe need and the ,nan with the skills to make a difference. But Horace's soldiering days ,vere long past and after 18 months he called it a day, returned to Natal and became a sheep farmer - and a very successful one at that.

Acknowledgements

I must acknowledge the assistance I received from a number of people in putting this tribute together: Ada111 Farson, Colonel Bert Howes, David Larsen and Keith Thrower contributed very useful inforn1ation and valuabJe con1ments. Mike Perks provided so.me of tl1e photographs.

All had known Horace Dainty at some stage of his career. But it was Horace's own summary of the highs and lows of his life, sent to the author in a number of en1ails in 2005, wbic)l provided the heart of ilie story. RB

---on the web and download your copies

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RADIO BYGONES No. 106, April/May 2007 1 1

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