Peter Copland Works in Meteorological Electronics (continued)

When the WF1 radar was returned to Cairns in its new glory the WF2 was put in a large box and loaded onto one of the lighthouse Cape ships for transport to Willis Island. The unloading worked ok I heard; I think everyone on the ship would have had their fingers crossed as the LARC set out for the Island.

The WF1 radar differed from the WF2 mainly by having a half power transmitter, and the RF (radio frequency) unit inside the cabin, left side, and, so a much longer waveguide and a rotating joint. One could work on the RF unit when it was raining, but it was an advantage to be metre tall and have 1.2 metre long arms. I still did some balloon flights, usually at 2315 UTC which was not too bad. A roster system with Jack Berry covered the weekends, and there were no 2.30 am starts. One morning I was halfway through the flight when the central air-conditioner duct burst into flames. All the mains power wiring connectors (large plastic tag strips) were loose and with water from the air-conditioner condensation, it gave up the ghost. A rather major rewire was required but it came back to life ok. The single phase alternator and control switching was replaced with a three phase unit around this time.

We bought a small, half-finished house not too far from work; it was finished by the time we left. We also gained two small boys in Cairns, so the house could not have taken all the spare time. We only sold the house later when we moved to Coffs Harbour.

With the change in staff classification from Observer (Radio) to Radio Technical Officer in 1970 we ceased all observational work, other than on a few special stations like Willis Island and in the Antarctic. Christmas 1970 was the first Christmas Day since joining the Bureau that I had not been working. In 1971 I attended a six week WF44 radar training course at Eagle Farm run by one Graham Linnett. The other students were Wally Lloyd-Jones, another guy from Tasmania and a quite sick George Khan. George died some months later in his home town of Townsville.

Bureau of Meteorology