Designs Department - Technology
The "RF Test Set" (UHF Test Equipment EP14M/507)
By Robin Caine (Project Leader)
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The "RF Test Set" project started in about 1970 and took nearly four years to complete - a time most agreed was far to long to be good for the participants. However, if success can be judged from the use it was put to, then the years of service (albeit with various upgrades) should prove it. They were certainly still in use ten years later. Quite a lot of Section 5 (RF) and also Section 6 (Transmission) were involved, Section 6 being responsible for the measuring receiver part, with Stan Collier, Alan English, Pete Durrant and Tony Mann the key people. In RF Section Yours truly, Martin Ellen (who did the synthesiser - a pioneering job in those days), Duncan Hopkins, Ron Seville and a young Scottish lad who was so impressed with working at the BBC (because it was creative, rather than destructive as his MOD work had seemed), that he left to go to university to read engineering (I wish I could remember his name).
The field trials were fun too - one prototype came back with a saw-cut in it due to a rigger using it as a saw bench at some site!. It also had ships tar on the case from the decks of the Isle of Wight ferry.
This "EDI Sheet" gives an outline description of the equipment:
There was a lot inside the ruggedised box, as illustrated by this block diagram:
A paper was presented at the Institution of Electrical Engineers and an extract is shown below:
