I joined EKCO in May 1962 upon leaving school and I served a year working in the main production Auto-Machine Shop, where I learnt a lot about Automatic Lathes, Second Operation machines and measurement of components.
I also learnt very quickly the ins and outs of working the system to maximise the piece rate bonuses where each job had an agreed operation time. Work too slow and not only did you fail to earn a bonus, but you incurred the wrath of the foreman and the girls who had the job timed to perfection. Work too fast and you ran the risk of the job being re-timed by the time and motion man, with subsequent loss of future bonuses and wrath of the girls (again).
In May 1963, I heard that about a vacancy in the 'Electronics' Development Inspection, so after having a short interview with Roy Henstridge (who was to become my boss) I was accepted and so started 7 1/2 years of total enjoyment working alongside Bill Boon, Bill Ray, Malcolm xxx, Alan Edwards and Ernie xxx. The foreman was Peter Thompson - a true Yorkshire man who thought that Yorkshire Cricket Club was the only club worthy of note. Later Jack Barlow, who was also one of Southend's best-known 'Master of Ceremony', joined us, which led to some lively debate about Cricket with Peter because he was a Lancashire man.
Bill Boon and Bill Ray had both at one time worked in the Maintenance Department and through them I heard many of the stories of the history of the company and some of the more famous antics of people over the years, some of which were quite racy!
When I joined the department, it was located in the old laboratory buildings dating from the late 1930's at the extreme left hand side of the site behind the R&D block 'running from front to back alongside the sports ground. The entrance to our area was opposite the internal car park behind the Engineering Tower block.
Over time I came to learn of the secret underground shelters and stores hidden below this car park and I once went down to the shelters with some of the maintenance men and I was amazed to find rooms still fully equipped with tables and benches. It was almost as if they had just been left as they were at the end of WW2. When I asked one of the maintenance men why there were tables etc, he told me that it was planned to be able to function and carry on limited production underground if needed during air raids?
Later on, we moved to bigger accommodation at the rear of the original R&D building where we were adjacent to 'Gibbys' Mechanical Lab, which made a lot of sense due to the mechanical nature of our work.
The role of the Development Inspection Department was primarily a mechanical inspection of everything made in the 'Model Shop' as well as checking bought in goods, which included electrical components although Ernie's role was checking the prototype wiring looms.
The inspection department, in those days did not have any of the modern aids considered essential today such as CMM's since these were not yet invented and all measurement was manual using traditional measuring instruments and a lot of maths was needed to do all the calculations needed.
Since a lot of the parts we were inspecting were development items, when we found faults - sometimes in the drawings themselves, we were expected to liase with the drawing office and/or the project team rather than just reject the parts.
By this means I was able to have what was perhaps a unique insight to the workings of many of the labs and the people working in them.
In rough chronological order, the following are some of the development projects we handled.
E190 gearbox and scanner unit.
This was still coming through although it was in the pre-production stage but nevertheless there were still proving trials going on. To me this was a remarkable piece of engineering and so lightweight. I believe that one big target was that the gearbox should weight less than 7 Lb Gibby had calculated all the relative weights of the components purely using his monster cylindrical slide rule and I believe that when it was actually weighed it was bang on target weight.
A company called SH Muffett manufactured the Spur Gears inside the gearbox in Aluminium and this was one of the first challenges I had to overcome since I had to learn how to check spur gearing and we had none of the electronic devices available today.
The gearbox casting was a magnesium alloy, which was vacuum impregnated with Aeridite this giving it great strength with ultra lightweight.
The E190 scanner unit as a whole was ascetically pleasing to look at and a testament to Gibbys design principles and although I believe that there were concerns that the engineering would be man enough for the job, time has justified his design since there are E190 systems still flying daily some 40 years after build.
Helicopter radar ARI 5955
This project was just starting to have parts made and was a radical change from any other system previously made both in gearbox and scanner design as well as the indicator unit.
Unusually for EKCO, the mechanical design was not by 'Gibby' but by a consultant engineer called 'Dennis Thorpe' who brought into the project to give a fresh approach and the design he evolved certainly was radical.
My first involvement was when we received the wooden pattern moulds for the new gearbox, which would be used to make to sand castings. These had to be checked to make sure that they were of the right shape and size to produce the castings, which was a bit tricky since we had to make an allowance for the shrinkage etc.
Once we saw the first casting made from the mould, this then had to be thoroughly checked both for size and to make sure that there was an adequate machining allowance to allow those faces, which needed machining. This involved painting all the surfaces to be machined with a blue marking out ink then scribing with a height gauge nib all the finished sizes. This was a laborious process, which had to be done in all 3 dimensions and took about a week to complete but at when finished gave a visual representation of the finished casting. Today using a CMM this check could probably be done in a day.
I can't remember if the prototype castings were machined in the 'model shop' (I think they were) but we again had to spend another week checking the finished item.
While the gearbox casting was being machined, the spur gears started to arrive for inspection and to me it was a marvel then and still is now how all this gearing could fit inside the casting.
Unlike the conventional gearboxes where the top of the gearbox was detachable to allow assembly, with the flat design of the helicopter gearbox, assembly of the gears had to be through the holes in the casting, which at a latter date would be for the servo motors.
Needless to say, this was a challenge and required a lot of skill and patience to get the build up right. It is a testament to the skills of the instrument mechanics such as my father that this unique gearbox design was made to a standard, which was later able to go into production without too many radical alterations.
