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The Pakistan Earth Stations Project. Pakistan Post Telephone and Telegraph, “PTT”
Introduction
I read a book recently which claims that, amongst other things, the human brain and memory have not
evolved to remember “duration” very well but only specific events, highlights or whatever catches its
fancy. Trying to write down my recollections of the Pakistan Earth Station Project I can confirm this
claim, in my case at least.
The project was for the supply of two Intelsat “A” Earth stations on a turnkey basis, one each in West
and East Pakistan. I was involved from the bid stage through to project execution, but not completion.
The following is not intended in any way to be a definitive history of the project or offer many technical
details but is simply what I remember in something like chronological order. Most of my recollections
seem to come from the pre-project period.
A few years ago I sent a photo of the Pakistan contract signing ceremony to the SPARtans and it was on
the website somewhere for a time in a 2011 newsletter. I have included this material here for continuity
and completeness. It was also a pretty good photograph. I have included some references to the Telesat
Earth Station Network project and made some other asides, which may sound a bit “off-topic” but were
“on topic” for me and RCA and I believe they make the timing of events and the context clearer.
The Pakistan proposal
At the time, 1969, this was certainly the largest project the RCA earth station group had bid on being
worth some $10 to 12m 1969 dollars....I would guess around $75m+ today? The bid documents,
especially the pricing tables, were extremely detailed and complicated and the bid preparation was a
major task. Being “turnkey” it involved a truly scary amount of civil works and ancillary items including
fully equipped kitchens, dormitories, furnished offices, vehicles of all kinds and huge standby diesel
generators. The list was endless. I remember in particular the specific inclusion of “Osterizer” blenders
for the kitchens and white, tropicalized Mercedes cars for the station managers and various trucks all
with spare parts. None of which had much to do with the company’s line of business but could not be
avoided and of course gave our senior management a monumental collective headache.
The proposal was prepared in the spring of 1969 under the overall and very able control of Doug Jung’s
system engineering group in which Milt Lillo and Mike Golder were key contributors as well as Doug
himself of course, with the structures and civils handled by Charlie Gareau’s civil works department.
Arne Lovas being the overall earth station department manager. The training program proposal was a
big issue with the customer and our proposal received his commendation later on for its depth and
attention to detail. It was prepared by Dr. Earl Fjarlie who was in Dr. Bachynski’s research department.
Marketing/Sales had been spearheaded by Roy Machum who had many contacts in Pakistan and had
laid the groundwork for the bid over the years including getting the Canadian Government (CIDA, the
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Canadian International Development Agency) to provide a 100%, interest free soft loan with a 10 year
grace period. Those were different times from today and without something like a soft loan competing
internationally against Japan, France, Italy and the USA who all subsidized their own suppliers one way
or another, was virtually impossible. My role in the proposal was something of a co-ordinator and
designated (by Arne) as the future project manager. I do not believe I was proposal manager but I’m
guessing it was most likely Bud Tucker from sales. The proposal preparation was my opportunity to
learn more (very rapidly!) about the whole earth station system, civil works, etc., and what it would take
to manage a project of this complexity when it was awarded. My own specific technical contributions
were normally in the Ground Communications Equipment (GCE) and the Project Management sections
of the proposal. Gil Kerr who has posted some of his recollections including a few concerning Pakistan
took over the GCE equipment engineering function from me around this time.
Submitting the bid. Karachi, my home town
The bid was sent over to Pakistan in a number of large suitcases sealed with sealing wax & the company
seal followed by myself and Bud Tucker from Sales. Bud was recently mentioned by Dean Collis in his
correspondence and they currently both live in N.Carolina.
In Karachi we stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel, in those days a truly magnificent place that cost
relatively little. The postcard I sent from Karachi on July 21st 1969 seen here indicates my room location
“x”; Room 612.
The Karachi Intercontinental Hotel 1969
The date on the card confirms I was 28 at the time. Just a kid.
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The Intercontinental was “The Place” in Karachi and people would come in, with their families, just to
wander through the lobby which ran the length of the hotel and wander out the other end or wander
back again. The photos below show the view from my hotel room window, not too much traffic in those
days though downtown was different. The Palace Hotel, on the other side of the road was where some
of our staff, including Randy Martin and his field crew, stayed during the project. In its heyday
(1920/30s) the Palace was a great Hotel, no doubt with genteel tea parties on the front lawn and maybe
croquet too. The Palace was demolished and replaced by a concrete Sheraton fortress in the 1980s. You
can find the Intercontinental (now the Pearl Continental) on the Internet and it seems to have been
refurbished, expanded and looks better than ever. Nice place to stay if you ever visit Karachi.
Views from my hotel room window
Definitely still the horse and buggy era.
If you look closely you can see the shaded
stand for the traffic director in the center
of the junction. Not too busy today.
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The Palace Hotel as seen from my window
The bids are opened
Most, if not all, of the bidders showed up for the formal bid opening ceremony in the PT&T offices with
various observers from the respective governments including Canada. I remember the stir our proposal
suitcases caused when they were dragged in by the customer. They were very heavy…..it made for good
theatre. It got even better when the bidder’s compulsory, sealed, price summary letters were read
out….the memorable “$0” price for the civil works from the Japanese comes to mind, which the
audience thought was the best joke the Japanese had come up with in years. It got a good laugh. Then
the collective gasp when our financing proposal was read out and the bid-opener saying “We wish to
thank Canada for their most generous offer” causing several bidders to close their note books and put
away their pencils and doubtless try to recall their countries’ foreign aid phone number. I think it was
the French who after the ceremony said to us with a shrug “It is over. You have won”. However we were
by no means the lowest price and the Americans, GTE in particular, were visibly very, very annoyed and
probably wondering if they had contributed enough to their State Senator’s campaign fund to get things
turned around through Washington. There were plenty of struggles yet to face.
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Waiting….and waiting…
Myself and Bud had come to Karachi expecting to stay just a few days, attend the bid opening
ceremony, make the rounds and go home to wait. Montreal had other ideas however and we received a
Telex telling us to sit tight and press the customer for a letter of intent. This seemed just a trifle
optimistic to us since it would take the customer months to read and analyze the proposals and his
consultant, Comsat, had not even arrived in town yet. My July 21st, 1969 postcard home says
“Absolutely nothing is happening”. Nevertheless Montreal were adamant so we stuck around and did
what we could. And watched what GTE were doing who were also sticking around… in the same hotel
and watching us. We also had time to talk things over (many times) with our highly competent local
Agent, IEC, managed by Mohamed Ahmed and the owner Naseem Qadir. Mohammed Ahmed also
appears in a photo Dave Barnby posted earlier this year. IEC operated in what I was to learn eventually
was the classical manner to win contracts overseas in developing countries…the broad working level
connections on the one hand (Mohamed) and the focused political/aristocratic level connections on the
other (Naseem) with technical expertise and comfort supplied by the Canadians (us). Our Agent’s family
connections were evident in a photo on the sideboard at Naseem Qadir’s house; a photo of the then
President, General Yahya Khan, in full uniform with Naseem’s granddaughter sitting on his lap.
Bud and I spent over a month in the Intercontinental meeting various people and sending endless
Telexes to Montreal. Telex, sometimes Telegrams, were all there was. No Fax. And phone calls were
virtually impossible involving multi-hop HF links via Europe; so even if you got through you couldn’t
understand what was being said. Mostly we worried about the Americans, GTE, whose salesman started
to sit in the Hotel lobby playing cards with himself most of the time…and of course always watching us
and what we were doing. Maybe we were being tailed: paranoia had set in. All our Telexes were
laboriously encoded using a code book which RCA international sales people had to carry with them.
This was probably a good idea since we were quite sure the GTE rep got copies of our Telexes from the
hotel Telex room long before Montreal received them. We always wondered if Montreal were actually
decoding and reading our many Telexes!
An unexpected visitor
Things got more exciting for a while with the totally unexpected arrival of the famous (or infamous) Bill
Roloff, the international sales superstar, who having recently left RCA was now apparently under
contract to GTE. This caused great anxiety since he knew the territory, our Agent and all the players very
well. Coded Telexes to Montreal exploded! However after a few days during which he managed to
insult and offend Bud Tucker and who knows who else, he went away, possibly getting the clear
message that this was not GTE’s turn to win.
I recall we also got friendly with a rep from American Express who had been sent to Karachi for a year as
his first job with Amex and was continuously wondering where he had gone wrong in his job interview
when his colleagues had been posted to London, Paris, New York, etc. Myself and Bud may have
entertained similar thoughts. We all often ate in nearby Agha’s Tavern as a change from the Hotel. It
was a well known restaurant and hang-out. Still some references to it here and there on the internet.
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Another postcard, from this trip sent on July 6th 1969 shows a place called “Clifton Park” which I do not
recall at all. Perhaps we wandered around the park from time to time no doubt with the GTE guy
watching from the bushes.
Clifton Park, Karachi
A stroll in the desert
We spent one afternoon visiting what we were told was the Karachi earth station site but it could have
been anywhere in fact…an empty patch of nondescript desert. The local desert is not a particularly
interesting place. No beautiful sand dunes or magnificent panoramas. Just a few rocks and cacti, and the
odd camel. An interesting thing occurred on the way back when our driver suddenly stopped and looked
very puzzled. He told Mohamed Ahmed, our agent, that he didn’t know where we were. Fortunately,
after driving around the desert for half an hour or so he found a landmark he recognized and got us back
safely to the Intercontinental. The desert is not a place to fool around in especially at the height of
summer. I found some old photographs I took of that outing shown below including one of Bud Tucker
himself.
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The Karachi area coast line. Not many sunbathers
Purported site of the Earth Station. Could be, could be.
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Local Fauna.
Lost in the desert, our car cooling off. I don’t see any roads.
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Bud Tucker pointing his 8mm camera at me.
I sent Bud these photos via Dean Collis recently and while the film he took above is long gone he
remembers taking it and said it was footage of me running, panting up a hill. Go figure. People do odd
things after a month of waiting in Karachi.
Finally, after a very long month or so we got the OK from Montreal to come home which we did….with
relief.
More waiting and return to Karachi. Contract negotiations
There followed a hiatus of around 6 months when doubtless many things were going on but of which I
knew nothing. The period in any tender evaluation process when speculation runs wild and nobody
really has a clue and if someone does have a clue there is no reason to believe them. The time when
everyone feels that someone else should really be doing something…. but what? However, it appears
that the right things were being done and the waiting ended in late 1969 when we were invited to
contract negotiations in Karachi which, according to my postcards sent at the time, started in mid-
January 1970. The negotiating team included myself, Arne Lovas (my boss), Fred Richaur (pricing), Tony
Lafleur (legal counsel), Peter von Sass (finance) and Roy Machum (sales/marketing) as well as our
agent, Mohamed Ahmed. Bud Tucker had by this time left RCA Montreal for another part of the
organization or elsewhere, I believe. Once again we were at the beautiful Intercontinental and this time
I had room 516 according to my postcard.
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The negotiations were extremely rough and tough and naturally concentrated on getting RCA to cut its
prices. Comsat, the customer’s consultant did us no favours at all and if the atmosphere between them
and us started out as “cool” at the end of the negotiations it was positively “frigid”. In my opinion
Comsat were far too much of an activist turn of mind at the time clearly believing they had a mission to
educate the world and suppliers should get in line ….and their disappointment at not negotiating with
GTE was not very well concealed. There was also apparently some history between individuals present,
Comsat-RCA, which fortunately I was too young to have been involved with and will not comment on
further.
A couple of post cards from this time, dated January 1970, below show Victoria Road by Night and the
Bori Bazar.
Victoria Road by Night The Bori Bazar
Neither of which place do I remember if I ever saw at all. However I very clearly remember the evening
we all spent at the world famous Beach Luxury Hotel not far from the Intercontinental where there was
an interesting Belly dancing show. We did not invite Comsat or the PTT of course….maybe that’s why
they were so irritable. Unfortunately no postcards of that evening exist although you can still find some
of the newspaper advertisements from that era if you search. Karachi was not such a bad place in those
days! A bit quieter today, I understand. The Beach Luxury was a famous old place and again references
can be found on the Internet. Its unofficial motto was “No Beach, no Luxury” which I can confirm having
stayed there once…thankfully for one night only.
Contract signing, Islamabad/Rawalpindi
After finishing the negotiations in Karachi a number of us went on to Rawalpindi/Islamabad to walk the
contract (slowly) through the government ministries and get it signed at the signing ceremony. Jack
Sutherland, the RCA GM, flew in for this and the whole group can be seen below. Nassem Qadir the
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owner of our Agent’s company, IEC, as always hovering in the background to be sure nothing went off
the rails at the last minute.
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and at the time consisted of only modern government office
buildings and had a reputation for being dull and colourless. This was true. Rawalpindi, on the other
hand, which adjoins Islamabad was a beautiful old town with many interesting shops and things to see.
It too has changed since then I hear and not for the better.
The contract was signed around the end of January or early February 1970 and we all went home. A
photograph of the ceremony is shown below and as Jack Sutherland was about to sign he turned to
Fred Richaur, the Pricing man, and asked “You did check this?” Not sure what he expected Fred to reply
to that. Fred just smiled.
Finally a Contract!
Seated: Tony Lafleur (Our legal counsel), Jack Sutherland (RCA GM), O.H. Mohamed (DG PTT), Mr.
Farooqi (Heir apparent to the DG PTT)
Standing: Mohamed Ahmed, Roy Machum, Naseem Qadir, A PTT man, Mr. A.N. Faizi (PTT station
director designate), another PTT man, Mike Morris (project manager designate), Mr Jamali (PTT), Fred
Richaur.
There is a reference to Mr. Faizi being present at the inauguration ceremony in 1972 in the Appendix.
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And still we wait…….
There then followed the usual delay, weeks/months, while the contract was reviewed and ratified by
CIDA, the usual intergovernmental exchanges took place and finally funds were disbursed and the
project started in the spring of 1970. As Project Manager designate I’m not sure what I was doing in the
interval but I well remember having long talks with Gilles Lachapelle who set up an excellent logistics
plan. The logistics in such a project were not simple and too often taken for granted but are very
important. For example, getting a huge diesel generator from Hewitt Equipment on the Trans Canada
Highway to the Earth station site in the desert many miles outside Karachi in one piece is no small task
and that was just one single item of hundreds. Incorrect paperwork could get things stuck in Pakistan
Customs literally forever, never to be seen again. CIDA had told us horror stories of boxes containing
delicate equipment worth a fortune being left open to the elements due to paperwork errors. I gained a
lot of knowledge from Gilles which continued to be valuable to me for decades afterward.
The Project starts at last. The Critical Design Review
The first item to get going was the critical design review where about a dozen or more persons from the
PTT as well a number of Comsat consultants came to Montreal for a couple of weeks to examine and
bless everything so we could proceed with building and ordering things. I clearly recall going to the
airport with most of the Pakistan contingent to collect the late arriving Mr. Abdullah Khan whom we
had never met but was somehow now “in charge”. He had a very nasty reputation for being “difficult”.
I wont put Comsat’s nickname for him on paper.
Comsat had de-frosted by this time and as far as I remember behaved themselves. By and large the
design review was not too bad, par for the course really, and we were (naturally) very well prepared. I
later experienced a lot worse on other projects.…..with the exception of one big item. LTV, our antenna
supplier from the US decided that now we had the contract it was a good time to jack-up the prices they
had quoted for the bid. Since the antennas were the largest single item both physically and cost-wise on
the project this looked like attempted extortion. After various maneuverings which I was barely
involved with it was decided we had no choice but to dump LTV and go with Philco-Ford. This was
handled by Arne Lovas, Doug Jung, and Charlie Gareau. The customer did not like this proposed change
one little bit and refused to agree despite many presentations showing why LTV’s Antenna (a 4 wheeler)
was an old fashioned design and Philco (a 3 wheeler) was naturally much better with many advantages.
No doubt there were many things at play which I wont speculate on here. Arne Lovas told me with his
usual smile that the customer had told him at the design review “Mr. Arne may we please not have all
these advantages.” Ultimately Arne had to go to Pakistan and spend weeks getting this change accepted
with the help of our Agent while LTV did a similar thing with the opposite intention in mind. Another
more pleasant event during the design review was an outing to Jarry Park to see the Expos. Our visitors
seemed thoroughly confused and unimpressed by baseball which was definitely not cricket and I’m sure
seemed very uncivilized. There was no break for tea at 4pm.
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Once the project really started and construction got going Randy Martin (whose reputation, shall we
say, was well known) was hired by Arne as the Karachi Station Field Manager and Emerson Reid, a
totally opposite character to Randy, as the construction manager. These gentlemen were fighting each
other before they were on the same continent and had their own personal “history” I was later told.
The letters I would receive regularly would have made a good soap opera script. Why we couldn’t find
two people who didn’t openly detest each other escaped me then and still does today. Emerson quit
after a while which was a pity but no surprise.
The project carried on in a more or less normal way and I can recall few details except Randy Martin’s
report of successfully installing the massive standby diesels on their concrete pads without the
availability of suitable cranes. Ian Grier reminded me at a SPARtans lunch a couple of years ago that he
had worked on the 7(?)GHz microwave backhaul links into Karachi.
The customer training program in Montreal went well and was heavily attended and I recall receiving a
small wooden elephant (or similar) as a parting gift which seems to have got lost in the shuffle over the
years. In the Appendix at the end of this document you will see reference made to one of the trainees, a
Mr. Akhtar Ahmed Bajwa working on the GCE. Mr. Bajwa seems to have had an illustrious career after
his working on the Deh Mandro station rising to CEO and Chairman of PAK Telecom by around 2000.
Everyone involved in Montreal must have met him but he was one of a large group.
The Civil/Indian war
The civil war started in the March 1971 maybe 11 to 12 months after the project start and we had a
number of people in the Karachi area at the time. Most of the shooting was in the East initially however.
Memory deceives us so I only trust hard records from a reliable source when specific dates are needed. I
recall the reports of our staff seeing the Indian bombers coming in over Karachi harbour. The Indian
bombing of Karachi was in December of 1971 so that is when these reports from our Karachi staff must
have been made. Mike Golder remembers our staff leaving Karachi after the bombing but returning
after the war ended and things had settled down. Dave Barnby’s recent recollections confirm this and
more when he and John Barkwith and others were evacuated from Karachi on military aircraft.
By December 1971 I would have already been transferred over to manage the Telesat Earth Station
Network Project, the world’s first domestic satellite earth station system. Lloyd Martin was the
successful RCA sales manager for the Telesat project which started out at around $12m and ended up
over $14m, in 1971 $, say $90+m today. I well recall Dean Collis writing out the Change Orders as the
project progressed. The record, from the Ottawa Journal archives, shows the Telesat contract as being
announced as awarded to RCA on June 21 1971 so I would have been on the job in July 1971 at the
latest, handing Pakistan over to George Koch. George would have been on the job when the Karachi
bombing took place.
The East Pakistan station was supposed to follow a few months behind the West construction schedule
and when the civil war started, March 1971, it was at a much earlier construction stage. Paul
Wajdowicz, a civil engineer from Charlie Gareau’s group, was there at the time doing survey’s or soil
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tests or getting the civil works underway. He had us seriously worried by going missing for weeks
probably some time in the spring /summer of 1971. All communications were down with the East so
even Telexes were not available. Finally we received a telegram saying that he was ok. He had
persuaded the Captain of a ship in Chittagong harbour to somehow transmit his telegram through the
ship’s radio via the ship owner’s head office. Later Paul showed us photos of how he had found (Bought?
Borrowed? Stole?) a horse and was having a fine old time galloping around the countryside doing God
knows what but surviving quite happily. Paul was a bit of a wild man in my and others’ eyes but he had a
lot of courage or at least had no fear and certainly seemed to have no problem handling himself in a civil
war. Good judgement regarding his personal safety may be another matter.
Ottawa and Telesat
So just after these momentous events I found myself commuting to Ottawa instead of Karachi and
foreseeing a relatively quiet life ahead with no international travel or tough customer to deal with. I was
never, never more wrong!
RCA had just gone through one of its periodic reorganizations & reshufflings and we were now entering
the infamous “matrix” organization era which generally brings most companies to their knees within a
couple of years. It did the same and worse for SR Telecom too (where I worked after 1984) some 30+
years later. In the new set-up John Stewart was in charge of all company Project Management and I
reported to him. Arne Lovas and Doug Jung stayed in their Engineering management functions but
under Bob Cox.
Anik A was launched in November 1972 and the Telesat Earth station project was likely completed not
long thereafter or at the same time. The history on the Internet seems to focus on the satellites and I
feel seems to consider the Earth Stations as incidental so its hard to be precise. Having said that there is
still a fair amount of information posted by enthusiasts or somebody who was involved, not all accurate.
Having seen with my own eyes in 2004 the rusting antenna graveyard in France at Plumeur Bodou, the
almost empty control rooms with wiring and empty equipment racks and consoles in disarray as well as
the devastation of Mill Village on Youtube….”Sic transit gloria…” never seemed more fitting.
The French however had second thoughts and have since turned the Plumeur Bodou area into a science
and telecom theme park (“Parc du Radome”) complete with a Planetarium and a Cite des Telecoms, etc.
All can be seen on the Internet with many photos interior and exterior and you can take a walk around
the site and inspect many of the old antennas on Google. The “Parc” area is just north of the town and
easy to find on Google maps/earth. It looks a whole lot better than when I was there in 2004…many of
the antennas have been repainted and returned to their former glory, the roads have been re-paved,
everything looking good. I think it says a lot about the French and how they view their technical
achievements and history. Perhaps we could learn something? There are links on the next page.
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Read all about it:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_de_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9communication_par_satellite_de_Pleumeur
-Bodou
And,
http://www.parcduradome.com/en/
East Pakistan becomes Bangladesh
Most of what follows is based on conversations I had with others as indicated to try to complete the
picture. It is difficult to say much more since no one seems to have the full Bangladesh story and
personally I was not involved.
The contract in East Pakistan had to be renegotiated of course. It was now Bangladesh, a new country.
This effort took quite a time and was led by George Koch. The new project was just that… a new project
using some if not all of the equipment still held in storage. This must have been quite complicated to
handle contractually given that the original contract for “Pakistan” would have to be downsized to only
West Pakistan with all kinds of cost adjustments and partial terminations and a new contract created for
Bangladesh several years after the original start date. I assume CIDA, the Canadian government agency,
was still providing the financing which would have course made it possible to eventually find a way
through this contractual swamp. There are some connections with rapid delivery projects which made
use of, or almost made use of, the original East Pakistan equipment: the station set up in Shanghai for
the Nixon visit and the station installed in Haiti for the soccer world cup. Each of which merit a full story
(not just the very few details I mention below) in their own right by someone who was involved. I
recently spoke/corresponded with Milt Lillo, Mike Golder, Roland Nicklaus and Frederic Hore to get the
Bangladesh slant and the information below is a brief summary what I heard from them.
Milt Lillo found a definitive reference which would put the completion of the project in 1975. A
commemorative stamp was also issued. Milt also found a recent quote on the internet from one of our
Bangladesh installation team, Frederic Hore, son of Henry Hore:
Following Milt’s lead I recently got in touch with Frederic and he has agreed to write out his
recollections of the project in the coming year (2016). He is a professional photographer and took a
good number of photos while in Bangladesh. One specific he mentioned was that he remembered
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working with the antenna crew from Rohr (California). So its possible they supplied the Bangladesh
antenna. Perhaps Philco sold the antenna they had manufactured several years earlier to someone else
instead of letting it sit in a warehouse which would make sense. Or perhaps it was never fabricated
which would also make sense.
Mike Golder recalls he was in New York in January 1972 to negotiate the Shanghai contract together
with John Collins and Mike Gondos….with a very short fuse delivery of February 1972.
Mike himself was in Shanghai in February with John Barkwith and Helmut Schwarz; the latter from the
RCA antenna group. A lot of the equipment including the equipment shelter came from an earth station
in Guam owned by RCA USA. However the GCE (Ground communication equipment) was from RCA
Montreal and was borrowed from the warehoused East Pakistan GCE. Most of the integration in the
shelter was done in Guam before delivery to Shanghai. The station was “transmit only” but had a
receiver to monitor the transmitted signal (loop back via satellite).
The Haiti station was completed in March 1974 to receive the World Cup Soccer broadcast and the only
remembered connection with Bangladesh/E. Pakistan seems to have been the potential need for a
Helium cooled paramp if the receive signal level were found to be too low, but in the end it wasn’t
required.
Both Shanghai and Haiti used small antennas (approx. 9 or 10m) compared with the much larger A
station antennas in Pakistan/Bangladesh (approx. 30m) and which could be erected much more rapidly
of course. Haiti later ordered a standard A station from RCA.
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One interesting, almost forgotten, temporary station was built for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and
installed in the Cote Des Neiges cemetery. However Teleglobe’s technicians union decided that it was
the right moment to go on strike (along with many other unions in Montreal at the time as I
remember/MM). Mike Golder had to cross the technicians picket line to get in to the station. Again this
was another rapidly assembled station with pieces borrowed from wherever they could be found….but
no evidence/recollection of anything related to East Pakistan.
Roland Nicklaus was stationed in Bangladesh for about a year starting perhaps at the end of 1973 or
early 1974 having been hired by George Koch. He was in charge of installing and commissioning the
Northern Electric multiplex system (still analog multiplex at that time of course) and remained until the
loop tests were completed. He recalls the field manager was Brian Careiss and remembers Frederic
Hore’s presence as well as John Pauch who likely looked after the antenna tracking system. Roland was
also involved with the West Pakistan multiplex some years earlier but at the time was working for
Northern Electric. While he has no other specifics to add regarding the station completion dates he
mentioned the day the large diesel fuel tank which was buried underground decided to suddenly surface
of its own accord. Bangladesh at the time was so short of fuel that the tank had been left empty…with
the inevitable result. He also recalls the external copper cabling being stolen regularly. This is in fact a
stable source of income for many entrepreneurs in many countries. However one day the cable was
live…..with the inevitable result.
As mentioned above this is not the full Bangladesh story and I look forward to reading Frederic Hore’s
account which should certainly add some colour based on what he told me on the phone.
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Personal conclusion
Once the Telesat project started in 1971 I found I had gone from the frying pan into the fire. Absence of
easy telecommunications would have been a major blessing. A typical day would include a bunch of
registered letters serving Notice on us for some transgression or other, real or suspected, not to
mention harassing phone calls and continuous demands for information and explanation. Come to think
of it my boss then, John Stewart, was pretty good at the latter too! Joking aside, I had a very good
relationship with John and while I do remember, would you believe?, that he did raise his voice and
become just a little impatient from time to time it was somehow never personal between us: just raging
at the world….and he came through with very good salary and performance reviews.
Compared to the PT&T Telesat were in an altogether different league and I came to think of my dealings
with Pakistan as the good old days…..but that’s another story for another day, maybe. Of course despite
all the stresses and strains at the time in retrospect these were great days and all these projects were
both genuine engineering achievements and great fun to work on. Most people had far less interesting
ways to earn a living.
When Bangladesh went on the air in 1975 the Telesat Earth station Network project was long complete
and was mostly already forgotten and I, after being manager of communications R&D or some such title
for a while under Chief Engineer Bob Cox (in the “Matrix”), was back in the fold with the newly
reconstituted Earth Station Group just like it was before. We were all relocated to old Lenoir St. from
Ste. Anne’s….back to the future!
Mike Morris
November 2015
November 2015
19
Appendix
The following are just 3 items I found on the internet after just a few minutes search.
There’s probably lots more but enough is enough!
Mr. Faizi was at contract
signing ceremony…see
photo Page 11.
November 2015
20
Was a trainee in
Montreal in 1970. See
next page.
November 2015
21
END.
Mr. Bajwa was a trainee in Montreal! This “CV” was part of the
Pakistan government’s application for him to represent them on the
Radio Regulation Board of the ITU.
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