Eric Hird

Island Lagoon – DSS41 and Minitrack

In the Control Room at DSS41 Woomera in 1964, Eric Hird is closest to the camera.

Englishman Eric E Hird started at DSS41 Island Lagoon – the first Deep Space Tracking Station outside the US – in early 1962.

As an EO3 (Experimental Officer 3) he was appointed Operations Supervisor from January to November 1962.

In January 1963, Jake Kerr, who had run Minitrack since 1957 (initially under Jack Dowling at the first site, on the Range) resigned to go back to WRE Salisbury in Adelaide. In preparation for this move, in December 1962, Eric was asked to go to the Minitrack site as Station Director. The Station Manager was Noel Johnson.

Bruce Window remembers (2018),

“[Eric] suddenly appeared at Minitrack in 1963 for a new launch pass after Jake Kerr had left. (Quite unbeknown to me, Jake went to Salisbury, having had enough from 1957 to 1963). Eric was wandering around with a notebook. I had never seen him before. He never introduced himself. When we were waiting for the first pass one evening and he started asking questions, and I said to him, ‘You are making us nervous…. we do this all the time… just leave us alone to do the job’. With that, he went and sat down while we did the pass. I later found out that he was our new E03 [Experimental Officer 3]. We became good friends and he went to the Dish thereafter.”

Eric was Station Director at the Satellite Tracking Facility, STF-18 (Minitrack) from December 1962 to July 1965.

Jan Delgado remembers, “They went to America after that and Eric was in the Engineering Section at JPL. They lived in Barstow so he had quite a long commute. He may have been at Goldstone as well, but not sure about that. We visited him in Melbourne, Florida in 1996.”

Jan Delgado took this photo when she and her parents visted Eric and his wife in Melbourne, Florida, in 1996. She writes, “That’s my mother, Norah, on the left, then Eric, Renee (Eric’s wife) and Dad (Pat Delgado).”

Renee and Eric Hird and Jan Delgado. Melbourne, Florida, 1996.