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Steve Bousfield

Page history last edited by Steve Bousfield 7 years, 11 months ago Saved with comment

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Introduction

      

circa 1980                           2011

 

        The following are some of my recollections of my career with MRSL , a period of my life that I enjoyed very much. I couldn’t cover everything so the omission of events or people does not mean that they are not fondly remembered. Also, time and memory play funny tricks when looking back so whilst I think the chronology is broadly correct there could well be some errors. Please feel free to jog my memory.

 

Background

 

I am a graduate of the University of Liverpool, alma mater of other such notables as Gerry Valentine and Garry Minors. During the long Summer holidays I worked at the fledgling Teesside Airport doing everything from loading baggage to driving fuel bowsers and even the Fire Section’s water tender and Ambulance. I also spent time in the Control Tower observing the procedures and taking in the jargon of Air Traffic Control. I got to see the other side of ATC when after completing my morning shift I several times spent the afternoon in the back of a British Eagle BAC 1-11 flopping around over the North Sea as its ex-Britannia (aircraft not airline) pilot was put through his paces by a British Aircraft Corp. training captain.

 

For most of the time everything went well but I do remember one occasion when I was on shift and the returning 1-11 declared an emergency – there was concern that the main brakes were locked on and that would have made for a pretty hairy landing. The Fire Crew was therefore scrambled – two fire appliances, an ambulance and me in an ancient Commer water bowser. We had to wait by the runway and then ‘chase’ the aircraft in case anything happened on touchdown. Fortunately all was well for the landing but the brakes on one side did indeed lock on and the aircraft had to taxi to its stand dragging one of its main landing gear wheels. The BAC engineer decided the problem was with the Maxaret unit and set about changing it with me looking on and getting a teach-in on how the thing was supposed to work. We also had an annual airshow and two things stick in my mind – the Belgian Air Force aerobatic team Fouga / Potez  Magisters being re-fuelled by a techy sitting astride the fuselage, fuel nozzle in on hand and lit cigarette in the other, and the clouds of fumes and terrible smell given off by the cartridge used to start the Avon engine of a Hawker Hunter.

 

(A small aside – the Radar & Navaids Technician at Teesside at the time  – George ? – joined MRSL many years after I last saw him at Teesside – such a small world)

 

In my final year at Liverpool there was the usual ‘milk round’ and I was offered interviews by a number of companies including the two which played a major part in my career – Elliott Automation and Marconi.

 

I remember traveling south from my home in Middlesborough on a diesel hauled train, transferring to Liverpool Street and being amazed to find the train to Chelmsford was still steam hauled. On arrival in Chelmsford I was to stay at the White Hart in Tindal Street.  First impressions weren’t good.

 

Next day I had to find my way to Marconi College to be interviewed by Mr Hulse. I was then sent to Baddow for a look round and another interview. At the time the company had a fleet of Daimler Majestic Majors, including a long wheel base limo and I remember being very impressed when the chauffeur unleashed the 4.5 litre V8 up the Baddow by-pass. Huge as it was, that car really moved.

 

Elliott Automation at Rochester was very different from Marconi. Despite half the offices being in the hangers where the Short Stirling was produced, there was a buzz about the place. They were designing control systems for Concorde and TSR2, mapping units for Jaguar, the Americans had ordered a new-fangled device called a Head-up display in large quantities and they had the contract for various control elements on the Lockheed C5A. They were exciting times.

 

I was offered a job as a Development Engineer in Elliott’s Airspace Control Division at the princely salary of £1000 per year.

 

My Career

 

I started work in September 1967 as part of a team working on the design of SSR decoding equipment for the NADGE and Linesman projects. Elliotts had made decoders before but these were a new design using integrated circuits. For Linesman each decoder had an associated on-line test unit that constantly monitored its correct working. As production got underway I moved into the Linesman team to see the equipment for that project through its factory testing phase.

 

A number of events then took place that had a great bearing on my future.  Libya had placed an order for a huge air defence system. This had necessitated the building of a new factory at Hillend in Scotland and with its opening it was decided to move the Rochester based engineering activities of Airspace Control Division to Borehamwood where the rest of the division’s engineers were based.

 

It was also around this time that Libya cancelled its contract which made a huge financial impact.  Then English Electric, owners of The Marconi Company, bought Elliott Automation.

 

I was invited to transfer to Borehamwood and, having no ties in Rochester and with the generous financial incentives on offer, readily accepted.

 

Borehamwood was home to Elliott’s air defence systems, like GL161, and its simulation systems. I, however, carried on with the Linesman decoder project. In fact, as one of very few people to make the move to Borehamwood, I was the Linesman decoder project.

 

The Elliott Automation building had a paternoster lift – with MGM’s studios opposite and ABC studios down the road in Elstree it regularly appeared on both the small and large screen – it was Friday afternoon, after the pub, sport to see how many people could get into a moving car on one floor and off again at the next. I seem to remember a figure of 15 or 18 being the maximum achieved.There was always the wag who stayed in the car as it traversed  across the top of its run and came out doing a handstand as the car continued its circuit.

 

New business was being won with SSR projects, including Plot Extractors, for Oslo (Fornebu) Airport and IBAC and other systems for customers including Greece and the Indian Navy.

 

In late 1968 it had been announced that GEC  (who had already taken over AEI which itself included Metropolitan Vickers and British Thomson Houston) and English Electric were to be allowed to merge. This kicked off a rationalisation process which resulted in me being on the move again.

 

The Linesman decoder project went into hiatus as other equipment at West Drayton with which it had to interface, wasn’t ready. When the time eventually came to start the integration George Robinson, then a fresh faced graduate was assigned, by Marconi, to the job.  So George was the first ‘Marconi person’ I met.

 

I went to Chelmsford and the newly formed Marconi Radar Systems Ltd. As before the incentives offered for moving were very attractive also as before very few people took up the offer.

 

I found myself in a section headed up by Bob Marshall, one of the senior Elliott engineers who initially transferred to Chelmsford. We had responsibility for finishing the ex-Elliott SSR  projects.

 

Initially accommodated in A Block at Baddow we were something of a novelty for a while and taken under the wing of Philip Sanderson, Radar’s admin manager, whose office was next door. There were other ex-Elliott teams working on GL161, SLEWC and NADGE plus a few people, like Dave Albert, who joined the development sections.

 

As Elliotts had traditionally worked with Cossor on SSR projects and Marconi with CSF there were a couple of ‘conflicts of interest’ that had to be sorted but generally everything progressed well.

 

Next came the move to the Crompton site and the wonders of E Block. I think there were four of us in Bob Marshall’s group (Systems E?) and he reported to Ian Donaldson. Mr Marshall was notable for rarely being seen in Chelmsford and it wasn’t long before our little section was put under the leadership of Harry Cole, himself reporting to Don Eastaugh. This was when I first met Robin Webb with whom we shared an office. At that time the Canadian Air Force bought a couple of S654s and leased an SSR system to complement the one at Lahr, one of their German NATO bases. The decoding was done using the original Elliott prototype. Part of the deal was that this system would be checked over at certain intervals. We usually flew down on Canadian transport aircraft but on one occasion Robin had just taken delivery of a new Rover 2000 so we would drive down which made for a pleasant trip. On another occasion there was a fault that we couldn’t trace and being a prototype the circuit boards were a little fragile. We were fortunate to have another reference system at Rivenhall and Charles Lelonde was despatched from Chelmsford to remove the boards from that system and take them to RAF Wethersfield to which the Lahr Commander had despatched one of his T33s to collect them and bring them back to Lahr. In the late afternoon the T33 arrived back, we replaced the boards and everything was in full working order again.

 

At some point around this time the Egyptian Air Force (or UAR Air Force as I think it was at the time) decided it needed two Air Defence Training Schools. I think the initial contact had been made at Farnborough but I am very hazy as to how the eventual contract came about. What I do know is that a simulator was part of the SLEWC contract and development of the hardware for that was the responsibility of Keith Coles and a brilliant young engineer by the name of Mike Burrows. I also know that no systems engineers with simulator experience had transferred from Borehamwood and I suddenly found myself as Systems Engineer responsible for a contract for two stand-alone Air Defence Schools for Egypt.

 

Paul Baird was the salesman responsible for winning this contract and it started a long and profitable association between the two of us that lasted until Paul’s retirement.

 

Shortly after the Egyptian order came another for a simulator to go with GL161 (System 4?) that was with the Singapore Air Force. Responsibility for this project went into Brian Kendon’s section. It was soon followed by one for RAF Boulmer and I was transferred into Brian’s section, sharing an office with Nick Pinnock and with, eventually, Ian Gillis as my Section Chief.

 

I was very fortunate to become ‘technical support to sales’ on simulation projects and had several trips to the US, Australia, New Zealand, Oman, Finland and Syria on the back of this. The Australians bought four systems, the RAF five more after Boulmer, Oman one and Kenya one, plus the Egyptians twice upgraded their systems.  All these projects were extremely successful and profitable due, I believe, to the fact that they were all implemented by broadly the same team.

 

In the early days we were indulged somewhat by Brian with our lengthy lunch hours, very often at The Cricketers which is a Greene King pub and served excellent, home made Cornish Pasties. Brian was safe in the knowledge that the work would be done on time and with great team spirit. Others took a dim view of what they saw as poor time keeping but it all came to an end with the introduction of the regimented flexitime system that made everyone much more conscious of the hours they were putting in. There was a certain amount of rebellion at first, hardly surprising when, for people like me it was the first time they had been ‘put on the clock,’ but eventually we all had to come into line.

 

Each of the simulation systems was slightly different from the others that had gone before as the system evolved to take on board changes in technology, the availability of the 900 series computer and particular customer needs like heightfinder interfaces. They were also delivered in a variety of ways, mostly for installation in the customer’s own building, but one for RAF Buchan was delivered already installed in a transportable building and the one for Kenya in a militarised mobile shelter, complete with S600 termination panel.

 

I next found myself in C Building, in John Lancaster’s group working with him on ACCSCO – the consortium aimed as the next NATO upgrade after NADGE. This was a consortium of European electronics companies that met each month at one of the company’s bases so we got around Europe a fair bit. I also had appendicitis.

 

I’m not sure exactly what happened next but a new Division was formed under Alan Greaves. Called Data Systems Division, its aim was to sell software services and also further exploit our simulation experience. I was its Sales Manager, with Derek Knight reporting to me. After several years of nurturing, the Finnish Air Force placed an order for a simulator and it was decided to use this project to rehost the simulation software on a different machine. A new concept of simulator was also developed which we called the Force Management Trainer. Both of these were promoted to the Iraqi Air Force with numerous trips to Baghdad during the Iran/Iraq war. There were even reports of the BA aircraft we were on being shot at on approach to Baghdad. It turned out it was just a wedding party exuberantly celebrating by firing into the air. Generally Baghdad wasn’t a bad place to be although food choices in the hotels were limited at times, but the people were always friendly. Having spent some time there, news reports during the subsequent war took on a greater dimension. When a reporter talked about the Palestine Hotel, for example, I knew exactly where he was – I’d stayed there, though it had been The Palestine Meridien then.

 

The Force Management Trainer was intended to train military commanders in the deployment and management of their assets but never got beyond the limited demonstration stage. It did however give me my big break on TV – a demonstration and interview on About Anglia which I had to do at the last minute when the person scheduled to do it failed to show up at work.

 

I next transferred to Radar Sales and after initially working with Bob Holloway and Johnny Johnson in the Middle East Team I was given non-aligned Europe and the Americas as my ‘patch.’ I reported to Dick Marston and had David Pott and Tony Manson reporting to me.

 

This took me to Sweden, Canada and the US where were doing business. One of the trips to Canada was memorable as Harry Fancy and I travelled one way by Concorde. It was also the time of the fall of Communism so Poland, Czechoslovakia (as was), Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria all became potential sources of business. Indeed Romania bought two sets of S711 electronics from us and we (eventually) supplied S511 systems, complete with weather channel, to the airports at Gdansk and Krakow. On one occasion I went with the company’s HS125 from Luton to Prague, back to Luton, up to Warton, back to Luton, on to Prague and back to Luton all in a day. The reason for this was to demonstrate the S511 and Messenger at Warton to the Czech ATC authorities who were a potential customer.

 

Robin Bandy and I became a sort of travelling road show, visiting Slovenia, Ukraine, Cyprus and even the US on liaison missions. Inevitably each evening tended to end up with a friendly discussion (i.e difference of opinion) at the bar.

The trip to Ukraine was particularly memorable. First of all Lufthansa upgraded us on the flight to Kiev then we were met at Kiev by a motley crew who escorted us to a Yak42 trijet for a flight to Zaporozhe. The cabin was laid out in executive style with a table laden with wine and fruit from the region. There were no seat belts, indeed there were no individual seats, more like a long bench,  and the pilot asked us to hang on to the plates and glasses while we took off.  We were looked after very well by the management of the Iskra factory that designed and built S-band radars for Russian SAM systems.

 

I think the next big change was the move to Eastwood House where, due to Matt Taiyeb taking on a different role I was given NATO as part of my patch and some new places to explore.

 

Not long after that, but not before taking additional 743D orders in Greece and the Lanza order from Spain,  most of the members of the Sales Dept, including me, were made redundant so that a new team of ‘professional ‘ salesmen could be brought in.

 

I was very fortunate be selected for a new role, that of Sales Support Manager which, as things turned out was to be the start of one of the most varied and exciting parts of my career.

 

From small beginnings my responsibilities eventually included the management of a team of seven, including the Graphics Team. Our activities ranged from such things as generating the sales monthly report through marketing intelligence to publicity, exhibitions, the divisional newsletter, the divisional intranet, the organisation of events and the press.  I was also a sort of ‘Salesman without Portfolio,’ standing in when others weren’t available and being despatched to give presentations at all sorts of events and locations.

 

By this time GMRDS had been established and its HQ was in Eastwood House so inevitably my team was used as a resource by the HQ staff. This gave us access to very senior members of the company and participation in activities outside our normal field.

 

We raised the standard of presentations by buying a pool of PC projectors and going all electronic. The standards achieved by Nik Hughes’ tremendous skills in pushing Powerpoint to its limits had to be seen to be believed. We made our own video, doing all the filming and editing in house, as well as creating our own brochures and adverts.

 

We started working with the Italians both in the run up to and after the formation of Alenia Marconi Systems which gave my team excellent opportunities as they had skills that were not available in-house in Rome. One of the biggest tasks on the formation of the JV was the rebranding of everything.  That was nothing compared to the rebranding that took place after the name change to AMS as we were then no longer legally entitled to use the Marconi name on anything so we had to make sure it was totally removed. We also had to rebrand and integrate the former Plessey Radar establishments on the Isle of Wight and at New Malden.  There was then a final rebranding to BAE Systems Insyte when the JV was dissolved.

 

One of the highpoints was being given the task of managing the Alenia Marconi presence at the first Farnborough following its formation. Julian McEwen in Graphics came up with a theme and we were just told by HQ ‘here’s your budget, get on with it.’ Phil Taylor was co-opted into the team and apart from liaising with the exhibition contractors he and Julian also managed the production of five capability videos merging the inputs from UK and Italy. Although our stand space was quite limited there were many favourable comments on what an effective display we had achieved.

 

I was involved in numerous exhibitions for Radar, feeding in to the HQ exhibitions team. On one occasion there was a hiccup and HQ found itself with an exhibition stand and no exhibit. I was then asked at short notice to come up with an exhibit for the land exhibition on the Malaysian Island of Langkawi. This is an annual event with two sites, one predominantly naval the other land / air. We had already arranged to take an HF antenna to the Naval site. To solve the problem of the land site we used Graphics Team member, Mark Playford’s extensive IT skills to put together an exhibit of Radar Division’s latest display offering.  Not only did Mark procure all the kit but he assembled it and demonstrated it in Malaysia. Exhibition work also took me to Thailand, Brazil and Chile as well as places closer to home like Paris and the Czech Republic.

 

I stayed in Radar Division working pretty much for both Radar and HQ until there was a headcount reduction and I transferred into HQ. I carried on doing pretty much the same as I had been but the Graphics Team stayed with Radar.

 

When the JV was dissolved and BAE took over in January 2005 I was involved in the rebranding but then did very little for several months whilst the new management pondered its organisation. Clearly the change of status from a management company to a division was going to mean a severe reduction in the numbers of senior posts. Eventually in July or thereabouts I was invited to be interviewed for a role in the exhibitions / publicity area but my heart wasn’t in it. I therefore asked what I would get if I took voluntary redundancy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the company move so fast. I had my offer, accepted it and was fully paid up and out the door on 31st August 2005, just a couple of weeks short of completing 38 years service.

 

 

 

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Ian Gillis said

at 6:02 pm on Feb 14, 2016

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