by David D. Guerin

In 1958, David Guerin (1933-2024) joined the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury, South Australia, as a Technical Officer.

During 1960 and early 1961, he led a small team of PMG* men who had been seconded to work with Western Electric representatives installing all of the electronic equipment at Red Lake.

David shared with us his personal memories and photos of Red Lake.

 

The tracking station at Red Lake, north of Woomera in South Australia.

On the 25th of May, 1961, just after my 28th birthday, President John F Kennedy of the United States made a vow that an American would land on the moon in “that decade”. This was probably as a result of the Cold War with Russia, and the fact that the Russians had launched “Sputnik”, a beachball-sized orbiting satellite on October 4th 1957. Sputnik was fairly basic but I remember watching at Pinery with Father to see it move eastwards through the night sky. Sputnik sent out a simple radio signal and every amateur radio enthusiast was building receivers to pick up the signal.

Soon after starting work at Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) at Salisbury in 1958, I remember being shown a series of fencing wires pegged out on the ground at Woomera that had been quickly assembled as an antenna to pick up Sputnik. It was a big sensation at the time. Many satellites now circle the night sky but no one bothers to look. The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) poured money and resources into landing on the moon, and had many early failures of rockets blowing up in a fiery explosion on the launch pad.

To put an American on the Moon there were to be 3 phases –

1. Project Mercury, firstly to get a man in a capsule in a ballistic trajectory (up into space above the atmosphere, reach the apogee, and then down to earth without going into orbit), and secondly into orbit around the earth.

2. Project Gemini, to have 2-man spacecraft in orbit, and have them practice meeting and docking together in the vastness of space.

3. Project Apollo, to send a spacecraft to orbit the moon and have it carry a lunar module that would take two astronauts down to the moon’s surface and back, while one astronaut remained orbiting the moon in the command module. On July 21st 1969, on Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step onto the moon from the Lunar Module called Eagle.

Communications were needed with the Project Mercury capsule as it went around the earth. Satellite communications of course then did not exist, and to track and communicate with the capsule required regular ground stations around the earth. Radio waves travel best in a ‘line of sight’ and are very distorted by the atmospheric effects near the horizon, so although there were to be 13 ground stations around the world, there were considerable gaps where there was no communication with the capsule. At each ground station there was a telemetry antenna to pick up detailed information on conditions in the capsule, and this information went on a teletype channel (400 bits per second = 50 bytes, incredibly slow by today’s standards) back to the States. The telemetry antenna was automatically steered to follow the signal coming from the capsule and this increased the received signal strength and also gave an approximate location while the capsule was ‘visible’ to the ground station. The position information was computed in the very basic computers of the day and ‘acquisition’ information sent on to the next ground station to tell the next telemetry antenna where to expect the capsule to appear over the horizon, and save searching time. At a few ground stations on American soil, or where they had secure relations with another country, there was also a powerful radar to get accurate tracking data. There was also a voice channel between the capsule and the nearest ground station. Only one person at each ground station was allowed to talk to the astronaut in the capsule, and he was the designated ‘Cap Com’ (capsule communicator) and each CapCom was another astronaut.

The 13 ground stations included; Bermuda, a ship in the Atlantic Ocean with tracking and communications equipment on it, Kano in Nigeria, Zanzibar, an Indian Ocean ship, Muchea about 40 km north of Perth, Red Lake about 40 km north of Woomera, Canton Island in the South Pacific, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Point Arguello in California, Guaymas in Mexico, and Corpus Christi in Texas.

The American way was to call tenders to build and manage all the equipment required to go to the moon. For Project Mercury ground stations the main contractor was Bendix, a well known radio and avionics firm. They sub-contracted the installation of the remote stations and the terrestrial communications to Western Electric. The major telephone company in the States then was the Bell system, a competent and respected company that was so maternal to the American people that it was dubbed “Ma Bell”. Ma Bell was broken up about 30 years later by Congress as too large and all powerful, but I recently read that there are now as many employees in the government telecommunications watchdog monitoring all the various operational companies, as there was in all of the Bell system in the 1960s. The manufacturing arm of the Bell system was Western Electric, a wholly owned subsidiary.

Western Electric subcontracted the installation of the two Australian stations to Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury. WRE wanted two Technical Officers with communications experience to supervise the subcontract. My workmate, Sam Smith was to do Muchea, and I was to do Red Lake. The technician installers would be forcibly ‘borrowed’ from the PMG, six at a time for each site. As this was a very important project and Australia could not be seen to be wanting, whatever was needed was made available. WRE was to install all the equipment, but commission only the communications gear, with commissioning of the Bendix radio and telemetry by Bendix Pacific personnel from the States.

“Western Electric” ground communications equipment at the Red Lake tracking station that was my specialty. W.R.E. Photo 25/1/1961.

 

No one in Australia had experience at the time with Western Electric equipment, as all our telephone equipment was English based. The principles were the same but the techniques were vastly different. Much of the equipment was very modern, but Western Electric did not change for the sake of change, and some equipment was incredibly old fashioned with carved wooden panels etc., but it did the job well and had been proved by time so why change it?

Also, on this project with only 13 sites, Western Electric did not bother to build special equipment, but merely adapted existing. If they wanted an amplifier for example, the work specification called for a standard panel of a dozen amplifiers, with instructions to cut off the wires to the other 11. This was incomprehensible at first, so Western Electric sent an experienced installer to each site. The Red Lake chap came from Cleveland, Ohio. I have forgotten his name but he was a nice fellow, and with his understanding of Western Electric ways we were able to make sense of it all. I remember in the end making a very large drawing of the signal paths in and out of the station and every set of terminals that it went through as it passed through each panel. This made it much easier to understand, and much faster to fault find and fix.

 

American “Bendix Pacific” staff commissioning the telemetry and capsule communication radio equipment W.R.E. Photo 25/1/61.

David Guerin in the same telemetry and capsule communications room 29 years later. The cooling ducts were needed, as much was then valve operated.

 

A new electricity pole route was built out to Red Lake from Woomera. As the American equipment was all 60 Hz (it is their standard power frequency whereas ours is 50 Hz), a pair of electric motors geared at a ratio of 5 to 6 to a pair of alternators to change the mains frequency to 60 Hz was installed so local mains power could be used. As a backup in case the mains failed, two sets of 60 Hertz Allis Chalmers diesel emergency generators were installed. This equipment was 100 KVA each set.

 

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The rear of the communications building in 1990.

The 50 to 60 Hz frequency converter motor-generator set was still there in 1990, and unused for 27 years.

In 1990, the two 100 KVA “Allis Chalmers” 6 cylinder diesels are also still there and in good condition.

 

An upgraded gravel road from Woomera was built. Buildings had to be built, air conditioning, water supplies, lunch rooms, toilets and amenities were needed. Temporary over night quarters were required for during the actual missions, as some would take 3 days, and the station had to be staffed continuously. As well as supplying the technicians to WRE, the PMG had to erect a new telephone pole route and wires the 40 odd kilometres out from Woomera, and a terminal station for the voice and teletype equipment.

 

The equipment is gone from the jointly owned FPS 16 radar building nearby. The tracking antenna was on the black section of the roof.

 

Weapons Research Establishment did a deal with the American Government. WRE wanted an accurate radar for the Woomera Rocket Range, and so did NASA to track the Mercury capsule, so a jointly funded FPS 16 radar was installed in a 2 story concrete building. This radar was supposed to be able to track a tennis ball at 40 miles. (At WRE Salisbury we used to test repaired World War II tracking radars by putting a copper plated table tennis ball inside a helium filled party balloon and could track it for 10 miles, although we had problems with people finding strange copper spheres in their backyard. This was overcome by writing “Return to WRE” on them). The siting of the radar for range use probably determined the siting of the Project Mercury tracking station near Red Lake, which was one of many usually dry salt lakes, and was on Purple Downs sheep station.

My part of the installation took about 5 months from September 1960 to February 1961. I stayed at the senior mess in Woomera and drove out to Red Lake each day with the Western Electric installer in a brick-red International Department of Supply ute. I flew home to Valley View [a suburb of Adelaide] most weekends.

Because we were working as a small group in a remote locality the American Bendix Pacific commissioning staff took the time to explain and encourage. They were nice people as well as very competent.

There was much pressure to finish on time and I was told if everything met schedule then I would get a promotion to a Technical Officer grade II. It did and I got the promotion. But I got more than the promotion. Firstly I had the satisfaction of working on the most exciting engineering project of the 20th century, and secondly I realized that there was much electronic engineering that I did not know. As a PMG technician I had been trained in everything that I worked on. But I had never heard of telemetry. I had never understood the concept of time division multiplex (I was to learn it well in my new T.O. II position, and it is universal now in digital technology). I began to realise that project development from concept to working system would be an exciting challenge, and there was a wider world than the P.M.G. communications and telephony. I decided to get my matriculation and I graduated with a University of Adelaide degree in Electronic Engineering in 1967.

 

Air conditioning equipment still there in 1990 and unused since 1963.

 

Although my part in the Red Lake Mercury station was finished by February 1961, the first orbit to use it did not occur for 7 months. The big triumph was John Glenn’s 3 orbits. The Americans took vast risks in catching up on the Russians, often moving on to the next step with only one successful trial after a string of failures. I have cheated here by listing the Mercury trials from mission controller Gene Krantz’ book “Failure is not an Option” (ISBN 0-425-17987-7, Berkley Publishing).

 

1. 21/1/60 Mercury-Redstone 1, ballistic trial, unmanned, Redstone rocket failed to lift off. 2. January 61 Mercury-Redstone 2, ballistic trial carrying chimpanzee “Ham” 3. 25/4/61 Mercury-Atlas 3, Atlas rocket destroyed after going off course. 4. 5/5/61 Mercury–Redstone 3, ballistic trial manned by Alan Shepherd. 5. 1/7/61 Mercury–Redstone, ballistic trial manned by Gus Grissom. He was saved but the capsule sank. 6. September 61 Mercury–Atlas 4, 1 orbit, unmanned. 7. 29/11/61 Mercury–Atlas 5, 3 orbits terminated after 2 orbits, with Chimpanzee “Enos”. 8. 20/2/62 Mercury–Atlas 6, John Glenn does 3 orbits in the capsule “Friendship 7” 9. 24/5/62 Mercury–Atlas 7, Scott Carpenter does 3 orbits in capsule “Aurora 7” 10. September 62 Mercury–Atlas 8, Wally Schirra does 6 orbits in capsule “Sigma 7” 11, 15/5/ 63 Mercury-Atlas 9, Gordo Cooper does 22 orbits in the capsule “Faith 7”.

 

Later when Kate and I were in Washington D.C. I was able to see “Friendship 7” in the Smithsonian museum.

In 1986 I went with my son Andrew, in our yellow Toyota Hilux utility to visit my other son, David, in the Kimberlies in Western Australia. It was a trip I look back on with great fondness. On the way back through Perth, Andrew and I stopped at Muchea, but all that was left of the Mercury station was a concrete slab. My equivalent station installer, Sam Smith, was a heavy smoker, and later, even although he had lost one lung, continued smoking with the inevitable result that he died just after I left WRE.

In May 1990 Kate and I went in the same yellow Hilux to Oodnadatta and stopped at Woomera on the way back. Kate had lived there from 1967 to 1970. We went to see Roxby Downs on a new bitumen road. The country seemed familiar to me, and when we saw a Purple Downs Station sign and turnoff, we went in and asked about the old Project Mercury Station and got permission to visit it. Much of it still remains. The telemetry and communications equipment has gone, but the many buildings, diesel generators, frequency changers, and PMG terminal building, are still there, lonely and abandoned.

Having seen the way the English have had the foresight to preserve great pieces of history such as Stevensons Rocket steam engine in the science museum, or Nelsons Victory battleship, it is a great shame that all of the Project Mercury equipment was not left intact. We have no sense of history in Australia. Indeed it would be a great tourist attraction for Americans who lived through the President Kennedy years, to see part of the immense engineering project that put them into the fore-front in the space race, and indeed as a world super power.

The telemetry aerial is still pointing to the west waiting forever for a capsule that will never come again.

 

The communications building with the telemetry tracking antenna still pointing to the west. 15/5/1990.

 

The Project Mercury Building site is at 30 degrees 49’ 19.58” S 136 degrees 50’ 40.59” E, and can be seen on Google Earth.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

David Guerin.

 

With grateful thanks to David for sharing his story and his photos of his return visit to Red Lake.

David said he initially wrote this for his family and updated the text for this website.

Sadly, today (2024), the buildings associated with Red Lake, including the imposing FPS-16 Rader building, have all been removed.

In memory of, and with grateful thanks to, David Davis Guerin.

 

* PMG = Post Master General’s Department – the (then) Australian Government-owned post and telecommunications organisation.