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It all began in 1974 when, in Building 46 at New Street, we began Development of the B6124 500kW HF Transmitter. The project was headed by Ron Bradbrook, ably assisted by Section Leaders Ewan Fenn and Len Howard.

We were to use an existing HF Drive, from Comms.

  • Neville Hogarth was designing The Control Unit,
  • Mick Cranmer the Servos,
  • Mel McGann the Broadband Amplifier,
  • Wasim Abdullah, the Memory unit
  • Johnny Whatson, & Ewan Fenn the RF system, and Modulation System Power Engineering, the High Voltage supply with Bryn Fox
  • Len Howard, the Pneumatic Switches
  • And Your’s truly the Power Supplies, AC distribution, Air and Water cooling and general Interconnections and overall system layout

We had assembled the prototype in Bldg. 46 and I was starting to circuit test this, and arrangements were in progress to connect the Transmitter to the  power house, controlled by Len Styles, down near Bldg 30 This would be used to power the HT supply.

Marconi B6124

However we never got to the stage of powering up, and not even connecting to the 415 Volts, for auxiliaries, when we were informed that some sales idiot had sold a B6124 to the Voice of Nigeria to be commissioned in 1977.

There was no hope in building another Production model, so the decision was made to dismantle the prototype, in its untested state, and ship this to Ikorodu, Nigeria.

In the meantime two Nigerians, Chris Bako and Michael Olieide (spelling?), arrived for training to be held as a series of lectures, by the above mentioned individuals, in the conference room in Bldg 46. I can’t remember if the Nigerians came over before the

Prototype was shipped and if not, then, we had nothing to show them.

I remember as Wasim was unavailable, and as I knew the Memory unit quite well, then I was to give that lecture. Having toiled through my lesson I finished up by asking the two gents if they had any questions, to which the reply was “What time do Woolworths Close?”

Soon after the transmitter arrived and was assembled in Ikorodu, it was soon ready to begin testing by Frank Fenwick, Mario Almeida and Nigel Warren.

About 5 weeks after testing began, reports came back that the single phase supplies, were too low in voltages, although the 3 Phase ones were O.K. On re-examining my designs, I found that I had, inadvertently, used a wrong factor in the design (Root 2, I think) and that, too, had also been missed by the individual who did the recheck. So hastily I had to redesign and contact the Transformer manufacturer, and order replacements, in a hurry.

When these were ready, I was bought an open return ticket on British Caledonian to Lagos, and had to hand carry these replacements and some missing parts as hand luggage. I got the necessary papers, for goods entering the country, which were about six pages, and Dr Griess, who was familiar with Nigeria looked at these and made about one dozen copies for me to take with me, and said that I would need the extra copies. Why? I would find out later!

After quite a few Jabs from the doctor at New Street, I was on my way to Gatwick and a few weeks that I will never forget.

On arrival at Lagos, Ikeja Airport, I was swarmed and overwhelmed by locals all pushing and shoving to get through immigration, and then through customs, with my large amount of hand luggage. The Customs lady demanded my paper work, so I handed her the sixty odd pages that Doc Griess had prepared for me, and when she saw this amount of paper, to go through, she handed it back to me and asked for ‘Next Please’! Eventually I made it through to see a couple of friendly white faces waiting for me. Thank goodness, as my hand luggage weighed a ton!

Then off to the Airport hotel, via a bar or two. Then it was an eternity to get booked into a room there. Sleep was said to be impossible, I was told, till about two o’clock when the ‘Heavy Sounds’ a very loud disco, just opposite the hotel, shut down, if we were lucky! So it was a question ‘If you can’t beat them, then join them’, which resulted in quite a bad hangover, (due to Star Beer) next morning, while we waited, patiently for breakfast.

Then what should have been a twenty minute journey, which took a remarkably short time of two hours, as I was soon to find out later. This was the famous Ikorodu Hill, which must go down in history

It was here that I found out that cars and trucks when bought, only the horn and four wheels were tested. The spare wheel was often sold as it was a non essential.  Cars only needed four wheels to run!

Here I could see trucks inching their way up the hill, avoiding various wrecks and broken down vehicles there. Boys were seen to follow these ascending trucks up the hill shoving wooden wedges under each back wheel as it, and as often not, progressed up the hill.

It was not possible to overtake these trucks as there was no room on either side, and if there was then one would most likely be hit by a runaway truck coming down the hill. Seemingly brakes were only a secondary condition on a vehicle.

Coming home that night I was told this would be experienced again coming down the hill, so we would have to leave two hours early to get to the bar in time to wind down. This left us about 4 hours to do the work! As I remember we had a Land Cruiser and a VW Passat for transport.

On one particular day, we did not get to work at all, as we were stuck there for six hours or so, and a bit of luck, enabled us to turn around, and get back to the hotel by about six in the evening. Our Driver was a local by the name of Kyrian, very good for a Nigerian, and we became good friends.  He originated from East Nigeria at Port Harcourt. Most locals were Yoruba some Hausa but he was an Ibo. It was best to have a local driver, as, if we were involved in an accident, and there were plenty of these, then, It helped, as a white face was easily blamed!

One day we were coming home with 5 of us in the VW with me in the middle of the back seat, when Kyrian caught us up, as he had finished helping the Aerial Riggers. I said that I would travel behind with him in the Land Cruiser. Just as well I did for the VW hit a passage of black smoke and the driver was blinded then ran into a lorry that was stopped. The lorry had scaffolding in the back and a piece of this went straight through the wind screen in the middle, and through the back window just where I’d been sitting earlier! I had a few bottles of Star Beer that evening!

Couple of nights after my arrival, the boys took me down to the Federal palace, after a death defying tour around Lagos. I thought that it was quite pleasant until I saw a large Rat running about, but the Beer was good.

The traffic in Lagos was jammed packed. The authorities had decided that, to ease the problem, they would restrict access by banning odd numbered plates one day and even the next. However that did not work as, people who owned cars were rich enough to own multiple vehicles!

On Sunday we either went to Bar Beach or Badagary Beach. There were a lot of people there on a Sunday. It was not safe to go any other day. Safety in numbers, I was told!

The hawkers were most annoying and persistent. Trying to ignore them did not work as they would kick sand in your

face to get attention. They would haggle to get the best price, but once the price was agreed they would stick to it. One particular guy sold me something and I only had one Naira notes which proved to be 50 Kobo too much, but he had no change either, so he unloaded his stuff asked us to look after it, as he disappeared and finally came back with my 50 Kobo. Strange but honest!

Meanwhile, at the transmitter hut, all was going quite well apart from the mains supply (415 Volts 3 Phase). I reported back in one of my regular reports, that the mains supply was up and down, more often than a ‘whores drawers’ I believe this to be quite amusing back in New Street and, I believe it even reached the MD!

A three phase supply is supposed to be 415 RMS all at the same time, but the Nigerian supply was more often two or even one phase at a particular time. I occasionally, watched it on the scope and I have seen one phase reaching nearly 1000 volt peak with the others missing. I often wondered how they accomplished that? Quite often one could see the kids in the street playing on these transformers, but I never saw any harmed, probably because the power was more often off, than on!

Gradually the transmitter began to be nearing the stage of applying High Voltage, and this necessitated informing New Street to send, the now late, Johnny Whatson out as none of us present had ever experienced powering the RF section.

The day that Johnny was due, we left early and went down to the Airport restaurant so that we would be in good time for Johnny’s arrival. The service was usually abysmal in the restaurant, and the four of us had developed the habit of befriending a local waiter and gave him 50 Kobo for quick service before our meal, which then would be about twenty minutes wait instead of the usual hour or more.

As we were in a hurry we offered ‘our friendly waiter’ 50 Kobo each for quick service. Well that improved the service so much, that, as I was eating my soup, the remainder was whipped away before I was finished, and the main course arrived in front of me!

We were there in good time for Johnny, and helped him through Immigration, just as the others had done for me. I now learnt the meaning of ‘Dash’. Every night after that we were asked if anyone was coming from the Airport, and did we need quick service!

One Sunday we decided to take the road to the next state, of Benin. It was a dual carriageway thereto, and there was not much traffic thereon, however we were surprised to see a VW Beetle, heading straight for us, on our side of the carriageway. It was coming at us at some speed so to avoid it we ended up on the verge. We did find out the reason for this, which was the water had come over the road on the other carriageway.

When we reached the beach we took the Land Cruiser on the beach and unfortunately got it stuck in the sand, and if it weren't for a bunch of helpful  Russians who pushed us to get it out, then I am not sure what we would have done!

One day we were on our way back from work we came across a horrible Coach crash with a lorry. There were dead and dying all around and when we tried to help our drivers stopped us, for fear that we would be blamed! Strange logic! The drivers were arguing about who was at fault amid all the dying around them! There was no way to call for help!

On a lighter note, we were being driven by our other driver, and he went racing through a red light, saying that ‘My brudder allas does that’. However when he stopped at a green light after that, we asked him what he was doing, to which he replied ‘My brudder, he may come the other way’! Inverse logic! Also at a roundabout he would not go around the island, but cut across the corner, or go back up the dual carriageway!

We were getting on quite well with the arrival of Johnny Whatson until there was a power cut, which was to last, over a week. The diesel generators started to power up, but did not include our transmitter hall. We did have the arrival of an engineer from the Diesel company who was supposed to install these for our transmitter, but found that they had been stored outside, and they had been damaged beyond repair. It seems they had been delivered in wooden crates, but these been removed, and now probably had someone living in them. So off he went, after asking where the nearest hotel was!! I still wonder where he spent the night? We did not see him again!

We could not do much except a few modifications as we had a soldering iron and one inspection lamp which consisted of a bulb and a lamp holder screwed to a piece of 4 X 2. However that stopped after the diesels went silent. It was then that the Chief Engineer was heard to remark ‘Oh, I better order some more Diesel’! We then stopped at the hotel for few days until we heard that the power was back on. This was however boring, we could not sleep much with the heat, so we would be out having our breakfast about 7.00 am, then looking for something to do. Having a bottle of coke or two and trying to avoid having a beer. There was also a beer shortage because of the power problems, and I ended up having a Nigerian brewed Guinness, at about  9.00 a.m. This tasted foul but the saying proved to be true, “there issuch thing as bad beer, if that is all there is!”. However I was moaning to the barman that the beer was awful , when he suddenly said ‘I have some ‘udder’ Guinness out the back’ and he went back and appeared with a dozen large tins of Guinness brewed in UK. As a result, I fell off my barstool about midday!

Quite often we would go to the ‘Heavy Sounds disco’ just across from the Airport Hotel Entrance. It was just required show your key from the hotel. It was quite loud, but we used to meet up with some expats there. We knew one as ‘Miserable Jack’ for he rarely smiled. He

had been in Nigeria for many years. He was the Traffic Manager for Petra Monk, a Brit./African firm. He told us some stories of his dealings. The one that I remember was when Nigeria decided to abandon driving on the left and switch to the right. He told us that they decided, to make things easier, they would get cars to switch on one day and lorries, the next!!! He said that he took all his equipment off the road for a month, until all the wrecks had been cleared! One night he was recounting one of his tales when I noticed a large drunk guy staggering in our direction, who started to unzip his flies behind Jack, so I dived at Jack and knocked him off his chair and we both fell on the floor. Jack yelled at me but stopped just as he saw a large stream of urine land just where he had been sitting! That was the same night that a ‘lady of the night’ approached as saying in a loud voice “My names Comfort, anybody want Comfort?” There were no takers, not from our group anyway!

Shortly after that the premises began to charge us entry into the disco, so one night after we had a few drinks we watched the men at the entrance and the guard at the exit. The guys going out would say goodnight to the guard, and we noticed that he did not look up. So we, one by one’ walked in backwards, said ‘goodnight’ and we got in free! That only worked once!

Once that the power had been restored it was back to work at Ikorodu and things began to progress but we did find that a chip in the Reflectometer needed changing, so Frank armed with a soldering iron and a Nigerian ‘helper’ was asked to take pliers and pull hard on the chip, when Frank said so. Frank was about to apply the iron, when there was a loud crack and the board got damaged, as the helper had acted in too much haste. The ‘helper’ headed for the door, rapidly, pursued by a flying pair of pliers and he was not seen again for a few days!

A few days later we arrived at the Transmitter hall a bit late because of Ikorodu Hill, and found a guy had come in and was chipping away at the plasterboard in the corner. Frank went over to him and asked what was he doing. He replied something like, repairing the hairline crack on the plaster board. Frank got annoyed and said ‘F**k off outside’. We then got our stuff and headed for Lagos Airport.

We were down in Lagos to find a rigging pole. Kyrian our trustworthy driver had volunteered to help the Aerial Riggers with the mast and had offered to drive the Land Cruiser with the tow rope. Unfortunately he was pulling the next section up via the ‘rigging poles’, but had omitted to stop when required. Result one bent rigging pole. So we had ordered another and was told by New street that it was on a particular flight, so we had gone to pick up this pole, urgently needed by the Riggers. We could see the pole behind the security fence at the Airport, but were told that it hadn't arrived. Much haggling went on but eventually after a large amount of ‘dash’ we had the pole.

When we came back we were amazed to find the whole corner of the wall missing and when we investigated this  the ‘plaster’ guy had tried to repair the cracks from the outside! He took Frank’s remark literally!

Soon after, I got a bout of Amoebic Dysentery, and spent a painful week in my hotel room , going to the toilet every five minutes or so. My Lomotil had been seized at the Airport. I ended up losing about four stone of weight but I recovered and as all was going well, my job done, I  tried to get on a flight to Gatwick without much luck. What a palaver to get on a British Caledonian flight. Did not want to fly Nigerian Air after my experiences, so I had to go all the way to Lagos, to ‘Bookshop House’, to get a flight. Eventually I got to the Airport, and it was nearly as bad getting out as it was coming in. My luggage was searched, by an officer with a Sten gun and he poked around in my dirty laundry before saying ‘have you anything for me?’ to which I put my hand in my shirt pocket and gave him a ten Naira note. He then closed the case and said ‘next!’ My luggage was put on a trolley and a young boy asked me which flight? Even though it had LGW on the label I handed him a five Naira note, to ensure that it got on the correct baggage truck.

Got into the Aircraft and took off. I was never so glad to get out of there, and vowed not to come back. Little did I know that I would return two years later, but that is another story!