Communication Consultants
&
Questek
Intelec (Pty) Ltd t/a Communication Consultants, whose television division was later taken over by Questek, was a major supplier of television equipment and a part of television history, providing equipment from manufacturers like Barco (monitors), IVC (VTRs), CMX (editing systems), Dynair (video/audio routing switchers), Quantel (digital effects, graphics and still store systems), Vital Industries (video/audio production switchers) and many more.
Frans Kruger, who was Technical Director of Communication Consultants and a Director of Questek, passed away in February 2019. He is survived by his wife Mara and their two daughters Karen and Nicole.
Trevor Strugnell and Chris Pretorius who were both Directors of Communication Consultants became Directors of Questek and retired in 2013 and 2019 respectively. The fourth Director of Questek was George van Gils
formerly of Philips and Dial-a-Vison who retired in 2022.
Brian Horn
In 1972 Intelec started Intelec Flight Electronics based at Rand Airport which was involved in the selling, installation and repairs of avionics equipment from Collins, Singer, Narco and King. Dennis Hinstridge was the Managing Director of Intelec, a company in the Hortors Group. Graham Shaw was their technical manager. Intelec was at that time dabbling in television systems and had a contract with the Holiday Inn group to supply eight hours of television in all their hotel rooms in Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana. This service was known as HITV and was achieved by importing the films into South Africa where they were transferred to video using a telecine and an IVC 801P helical scan VTR. On a 3-month basis a vanload of 1” tapes would be delivered to each Holiday Inn site and exchanged with the tapes used at that site for the previous 3 months. The contract stated that the television programs piped to the rooms would be for a number of hours per day and would not run the same show within 14 days. Each Holiday Inn had a control room fitted with three IVC 701P VTR’s, various monitoring, a sound mixer and a modulator set to feed a UHF TV signal to each room which was equipped with a Barco multi format TV set. The team in the control room were employed by Intelec and ran the HITV system including fault finding and setup of the room TV’s.
In early 1974 two gentlemen came to visit Intelec Flight Electronics. They were Hennie Venter and Frans Kruger from Communication Consultants who informed the staff that they had “taken over Intelec and
were going to shut down the Flight Electronics company, but were offering staff technical posts in Communication Consultants”. Hennie Venter was the Managing Director of Communication Consultants. a company in
the Hortors Group specialising in office and school intercom systems imported from Ringmaster in Norway. Frans Kruger was part of their sales team.
Intelec had been awarded two contracts for SABC television. The first was to supply IVC 1” Video Tape Recorders (VTR’s) to SABC for the Television Center to be used for the test transmissions. The second was
to supply Barco colour monitors for the Television Center.
In 1982 Frans Kruger was appointed Sales Director of Communication Consultants, Chris Pretorius was appointed R&D Director and Trevor Strugnell was appointed Director in charge of television sales and service.
In 1988 Frans Kruger, Chris Pretorius and Trevor Strugnell wanted to break away from Communication Consultants and offered to buy out the Television Division from the owners, the Venters. An offer was made which was initially accepted in principle by Hennie Venter. This was subsequently denied by Liz Venter who wanted more money than it was worth. Frans and Chris left Communication Consultants at the end of 1988 to start Questek and Trevor joined them in February 1989.
Major projects under taken by Communications Consultants included:
- SABC TV1 Project
- The supply of IVC 900 series videotape machines (VTR’s) for the test transmissions from the Television Centre.
- The supply of Barco colour and monochrome television monitors for the Television Centre.
- SABC TV2/3 Project
- The supply of Barco colour and monochrome television monitors.
- The supply of microprocessor controlled assignable routing switchers based on Dynair routers with custom designed and built control systems.
- The supply of custom designed and built microprocessor controlled assignable studio intercom systems.
- The supply of Quantel frame stores, digital library systems and graphics systems.
- South African Defence Force (SADF) Training Studio
The SADF had a TV Studio in Voortrekkerhoogte, Pretoria designed and built using Bosch Fernseh equipment and IVC VTR’s. They required a new studio to be designed for the College of Educational Technology (Colet). Existing equipment could be used but the system had to be upgraded where required. Communication Consultants won the contract and set about designing the new studio together with the team of technicians from SADF, under the command of Captain Ben Benade.
The new TV studio was built and when commissioned worked exceptionally well, resulting in Communication Consultants being appointed to supply technical assistance on a daily basis. Trevor Strugnell was seconded to them for this purpose. By this time the TV department had grown and Trevor was assisted by Chris Pretorius and Phil Kroll.
- SADF Outside Broadcast Vehicle
Following the success of the Colet TV studio Communication Consultants won a tender to design, build and run three a camera colour outside broadcast vehicle for Colet. This was one of the most exciting projects undertaken by their team. At this stage there were no OB units anywhere in South Africa, American sanctions being applied to the country so a lot of American equipment was not allowed to be imported. The only way they could get an idea of how to go about this was to visit IVC customers in the UK armed with a camera and a notebook. This was done by a team consisting of Frans Kruger, Chris Pretorius, Phil Kroll and Trevor Strugnell, resulting in the first OB van ever to be built and operated in South Africa.
It was equipped with IVC 7000P portable colour cameras, IVC 961P VTR, Barco monitors, and a range of ancillary equipment. One problem was finding a suitable vision mixer due to the sanctions, so some of their experienced good friends at the SABC designed and built a local vision mixer. The contract once again included supplying technical support and so Phil Kroll and Trevor Stugnell were seconded to them when necessary to go on a shoot with the Colet team.
The main problem with the OB van was that the IVC camera cables were not reliable as they had never been designed for the rigorous use they were being put through. Many a night was spent in removing and resoldering the 43 odd strand camera connectors consisting of coax, audio and control cables. Apart from that the van performed very well for its purpose and the equipment was upgraded in following years a number of times to take advantage of newer technology. - South West Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SWABC)
In May 1979 the SABC relinquished control of broadcasting services in South West Africa (Namibia) and the SWABC was established in its place. In December 1980 Communication Consultants received a call from someone from SWABC wanting to discuss broadcast television. They had been referred by SABC. They were insistent and stressed the urgency of having a meeting in Windhoek as soon as possible as they had been given the go ahead to start a television broadcast service which had to begin broadcasting in October 1981. Frans Kruger had a discussion with Hennie Venter and following telephonic meetings it was decided that Frans and Trevor Strugnell would fly to Windhoek to have initial discussions with the Director General Piet Venter and Chief Engineer Karl-Heinze Heppe of SWABC.
They explained what was required as well as the tight timeline and were willing to appoint Communication Consultants as the company to design, install and commission their initial TV broadcast system to be on air by the appointed date. There was no time to follow normal tender procedures and so they were appointed in December to get the job done. Trevor managed the technical aspects of the project with Frans handling the financial and business aspects.
On a daily basis the SABC would fly 1” tapes recorded from the night before on Ampex VPR 2B’s in SABC TV1 studios in Johannesburg to Windhoek. These would be edited with SWABC logos and news readers in order to localise them for broadcast the night of arrival in Windhoek. So their news was always a day late. The SWABC broadcasts were recorded in Windhoek and flown the following day to Oshakati in northern Namibia.In 1982 Communication Consultants compiled a tender for an OB van on behalf of SWABC. They could obviously not bid for this as they were their consultants. Ampex UK (Dave McArthur) happened to have a ready-built 3-camera OB van which was ordered as it cut down the delivery time. Some minor modifications took place in order to prepare this vehicle for road conditions in South West Africa. The commissioning was done at Ampex in Reading by Mr. H J Grobbelaar (Superintendent Management and Administration: SWABC), Marius Erasmus (Engineer: SWABC) and Frans Kruger (Communication Consultants).
Communication Consultants continued to supply and maintenance of broadcast televison equipment to SABC as well as to SWABC (which became NBC), Bophuthatswana TV, MNET and most of the private production and post
production houses in South Africa until 1989 when the manufacturers moved their representation from Communication Consultantss to Questek following the establishment of that company.
Questek supplied equipment and expertise to the broadcast industry until 2019 when the only director left at Questek was George van Gils and the company was scaled right down.