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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.