Hi, Guys,
I've just found another reference to early Racal
history in "Radio Bygones" for Oct/Nov 1993, in an
article called "Racal and the RA.17 HF Communications
Receiver", by Keith R. Thrower, who I believe worked
for the company (I stand to be corrected on that!).
"... Ray, Raymond Brown, and Cal, George Calder (Jock)
Cunningham established Racal Ltd. in 1950. This led
to the formation of Racal Engineering Ltd. in 1951 and
a move to a 5000 square-foot building in Isleworth,
near the London Airport.
Early in 1953, Racal hoped to acquire the rights to
manufacture in Britain the new Collins 51-J HF
communications receiver. On the basis of this, Racal
was awarded a contract with the Royal Navy for the
supply of 200 of these receivers. For the manufacture
of the Collins receiver, Racal proposed to use a
substantial portion of British components.
Unfortunately, Collins insisted that only US
components be used, and after a visit to Racal's
primitive facilities at Isleworth, Collins decided
that Racal was too small to undertake manufacture of
the radio, which was probably true at that time.
The problem facing Racal was to produce a receiver
with the same general characteristics as the Collins
sets to fulfill their Royal Navy contract.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, Dr. Trevor Wadley, who had
worked for the Telecommunications Research
Establishment in England during the war, was
developing a communications receiver based on an
extremely accurate and elegant frequency control
scheme that he had developed for use in test
equipment. Racal and Wadley eventually got together.
The result was one of the world's great communications
receivers. The design work on the RA.17 was started in
late 1954, and production continued at least until
1967 ..."
best regards, Bob
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