The RFUANZ Awards celebrate outstanding achievement by individuals in the Radio Frequency industry.
Ian Gardiner
Technical Excellence, sponsored by GME
Ian Gardiner was the successful recipient of the Technical Excellence Award at the 2015 RFUANZ Conference. With an extensive nomination encompassing years of technical knowledge, Ian was the perfect recipient for this award. Ian started with Tait in 1966. In December 1969 Ian joined Hatfield Instruments as Chief Engineer. He was responsible for the production of test instruments for the NZPO and producing the Hatfield series of Single Sideband radios. in 1970 he joined Plessey Electronics in Melbourne as Senior Design Engineer. While here he was the Senior Project engineer on development of MTR40 series of mobile radios. In 1974 Ian moved back to Christchurch joining Tait Electronics as Senior Engineer. Immediately commenced the development of the T193 VHF FM radio which was Tait’s 1st venture into the export of FM radios. Later Marine versions and UHF T196 models were designed. Ian was responsible for, introducing PIN diode antenna changeover systems replacing relays, selecting power transistors for RF power amplifiers and working with RF power manufacturers to get optimum performance for Tait radios and introduced Industrial Design into Tait by Redesigning the front panels and knobs for T190 series.
In 2005 Ian joined Tait America (Houston) but remained based in Christchurch. A selection of projects worked on are Pittsburg Bus and Port Radio System, Vancouver Skytrain Quasi Sync VHF system in Canada, A-Beep DMR system in Chicago. Tait’s first DMR system in the USA, Grant County PUD DMR system in Washington State and many more.
Murray Patterson
Project Excellence, sponsored by Hytera Communications
The Speights Coast to Coast, likes its name suggests is a multisport event which spans from Kumara located on the West coast of the South Island and finishes at New Brighton on the South Islands East coast.
The owners of the event wanted to ensure that they could run the event with as many new and improved safety initiatives as possible. One areas of concern highlighted from previous years was communications.
The management of this project had to be spot on. Not only were they dealing with various locations across the south Island, but the challenge was further increased to include live competitor timing, real time GPS tracking and live video from various parts of the course, all to be fed back to a big screen at the finish line. This event involved 8 DMR repeaters all configured in a single IP site connect system. 1 of the 8 repeaters was off the main network and was connected by way of a private IP tunnel over the internet up-to a site in the port hills.
105 VHF portable radios were involved and every radio was GPS enabled and reporting its location back to the GPS server.
*Daniel Irvine accepting the award for CRS.
Peter Noon
Service to the Industry, sponsored by Tait Communications
Peter noon commenced his career as a trainee technician with NZBC. In 1968. He progressed from radio to TV servicing and in 1973 purchased Teletronics Wai LTD in Masterton from where he began servicing mobile radio. In 1981 Teletronics became a Tait mobile radio dealer.
One of his early projects was to re-engineer the Mt Eringa site for Wai Radio Telephone Users Assn (WRTUA) at this time he was a committee member of WRTUA and he was appointed technical advisor soon after.
The WRTUA initiated the formation of RFUANZ and Peter was one of four committee members who travelled to Rotorua to organise the inaugural meeting (two others being the inaugural chairman Brian Hansen and the secretary Dave Pringle).
The WRTUA became Airtel ltd in 2001 and peter is the present chairman of directors. His latest project is the establishment of a new additional site at Mt Bute nth east Wairarapa which is almost complete.
Jack Frost
Innovation in the Industry, sponsored by Icom NZ
Jack is an innovative individual who embraces new technologies. He is a creative person who always looks for a solution to a problem from a slightly different perspective to most – often with satisfying results.
Jack has also been involved with organising a commercial safety liaison channel, for use by NZ emergency services.
He has also developed and put into service numerous ‘low duty cycle’ repeaters using radio product from multiple manufacturers. These units work using a store and forward functionality for voice communications, thus reducing the antenna system and radio hardware required, current drain and overall expense of the solution.
Garry Parker
Outstanding Sales and Support, sponsored by Motorola Solutions
TL Parker is a long established Christchurch company serving many key clients in the South Island region and extends to North Island centres as well. Not only do they provide substantial sales and support but they also operate both analogue and digital wide area network configurations for extended mobile radio analogue, digital and data systems for their clients. Garry Parker nomination came with a glowing recommendation from Christchurch Airport praising TL Parker for their ongoing support. “TL Parker Communication has provided various radio based solutions for Christchurch International Airport Ltd (CIAL) since 1996. During this time TL Parker have always provided a superior product and level of service to our operation. The team, led by Garry Parker is always extremely reliable and ‘bends over backwards’ to deliver on any promised timelines”. Garry was the perfect recipient for the Outstanding Sales and Support Award and his customer testimonial was evidence of this.
Edward Ross
Excellence in Customer Service, sponsored by Vertex Standard
Edward was awarded the 2015 Customer Service award for his work on the Oxfam Trailwalker project. Edward went above and beyond for client Oxfam to ensure customer satisfaction so they could have a fully operational complete radio solution for the annual Oxfam Trailwalker event. The customer was so satisfied that they have asked Icom and Edward to provide a radio solution for their Oxfam Trailwalker event again this year.
*Ian Lisk shown in the photo accepting the award on Edwards behalf.
