Ray Clarke Looks Back (continued)

Midwinter 1974 saw me in Darwin for Regional Forecasting Centre (RFC) instrumentation where I renewed acquaintance with RMO Jack Byrne, and also Pete Copland, always a friendly chap who included amongst his busy life the activity of collecting ancient cars. His particular fad this trip was for Vanguards (or was that guardsvans?). Then Regional Director Ray Wilkie, now a celebrity at Channel 10 in Brisbane, was also into the old car business; Citro'ns or some similar make. Still, everyone to their own! Darwin was Utopia in the tropics after the fickle Melbourne weather. It was hard to get on a southbound plane.

While Bob West installed the WF44 radar at Mount Kanigan with RMO Queensland Graham Linnett, Freddie Soutter and other Queensland boys, I returned in April 1975 to the site of my first WF44 radar installation at Laverton to install a second WF44 radar there having its scanner equipment on a higher nine metre tower.

Although a relatively standard procedure, complacency when lifting can prove at least highly embarrassing and quite possibly very disastrous. Luckily, I never had any damage to any equipment during my installation career but I did have some tense moments. I recall at Mount Gambier, when the only available crane wasn't tall enough to lift the scanner over the parapet, we improvised by building up the ground with packing case sides, etc, a calculated risk considering the 45 to 55 km/hr winds that day. On another occasion, elsewhere, the scanner dropped abruptly because of incompetent jib control by, presumably, a learner crane driver. At the time the scanner was suspended above the tower platform. Luckily, it didn't hit the deck. However, the alarming drop and wild gyration which occurred was sufficient to scare the living daylights out of me and a couple of others who were up top on the tower when the gear dropped.

Installation work often called for improvisation not strictly in accordance with rules and regulations. At one particular remote station, rather than wait a week for the Works 'sparkie' to arrive, I installed power meters and the incoming three phase tails so I could get the power on. When the 'sparkie' (battling Bill Bayliss) arrived from the city he approved the connections and all was well. Consistently, wherever I went, I had to con others, in particular DCA, Telecom and Works to expedite jobs which were behind schedule or to get that little bit extra at no charge. The job had to be done and targets met. It was as simple as that.

In August 1975 I supervised the installation of the WF44 radar for the RAAF at Butterworth, Malaysia. I travelled from Laverton to Butterworth in a Hercules aircraft staring at a packing case for 10 hours. I can tell you about every grain in the wood.

Bureau of Meteorology