Brian Horn
SABC
1971 to 1989
Part 1 - 1971 to 1976
I started my career in broadcasting at RTV (Rhodesia Television) in January 1970 after graduating from the University of Natal. A year later Phillip (Phil) Slack joined RTV after graduating from the University of Cape Town. I was responsible for redesigning of the master and studio control areas, including designing and building the master control video/audio switcher. Phil was in charge of the VTR machines.
In March 1971 I was invited to join the team covering South Africas first outside broadcast, the South African Grand Prix at Kyalami. South Africa's First TV Outside Broadcast
In May 1971 we saw an advert in the Johannesburg newspaper, which got on Sundays, in which the SABC were looking to hire engineers. We both applied and were very surprised when we each received back an employment contract. No interview? We decided to travel to Johannesburg to get more information. We met Douglas Mills, the Director: Technical Services who explained that the SABC had no television services. Since we were not interesting in working in radio, he gave us an undertaking that if were joined we would be the first to be assigned to work for the television service, once it was announced. After negotiating a pay raise, before joining, we received a revised offer letter on July 23, 1971. We commenced our service with SABC on November 1, 1971, working for the studio department.
After attending a SABC orientation course, which had us spending a few days in various divisions of the corporation, we were seconded to work for Fischbach & Moore, the consultants hired to design and build the Television Center. Others seconded were Jock Anderson from transmitters and Don Davies from electrical and mechanical.
The first project we worked on was designing and building the Television Training Center (TTC). A gym in the newly built workshop block was converted to be the TTC. On completion of
the design I was sent on a number of overseas trips to acceptance test the equipment, these included vists to Richmond Hill in Canada with August Breedt, and Rank Cintel in the UK with
Charles Michie.
The TTC opened in 1974, I was appointed as senior engineer in charge of the technical aspects, with Leo van der Walt in chage of training. Phil Slack (cameras) and Francois Jordaan (main control)
were appointed as engineers, Charles Michie (VTR) and Neal Allen (telecine) were appointed as assistant engineers, and Gunther Becker and David Mittan were technicians.
The training team consisted of Mike Leeston-Smith (Production), Brian Taylor (Sound), Don McHardy (Technical), Randall Miles (Lighting) and Allan Johnston, Terry Heath and Allan Joy (Cameras).
After running TTC and training engineers for a year Phil Slack and I were seconded back to Fischbach & Moore to work on the Television Center (TVC) project. Phil was assigned to work on the video/audio/control system aspects of the project. I opted to work with Kerry Moore doing the design of the film processing and handling facilities, language dubbing facilities and outside broadcast vehicles. The SABC already had news film teams, the SABC planning being handled by Alan Stonebank who had also joined from RTV. Alan and I visited various film facilities overseas, including the BBC film library and TechniColor Labs. The BBC was having to convert nitrate based film to the new acetate based film. The nitrate film was extremely dangerous as it aged and emitted gasses.
I had only been at Fischbach & Moore a couple of months when I was called back to the SABC to head up a team to manage the television projects that were not part of the TVC. These projects had to be completed by the time test tranmissions were launched, these being used to stimulate the sales of television sets before the official launch of the service on January 6, 1976. Initially the team only consisted of myself and Theuns Nel. We were later joined by Gunther Becker.
TV1
Alan Stonebank
Brian Horn
Marius Kleynhans
1975
- Design and build the regional switching centers (RSC) in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Bloemfontein.
The RSC's had two functions, firstly to control the televsion signal distributed to the television transmitters in the region, allowing the injection of service messages from the slide scanner or a local videotape machine (VTR). Secondly they were the injection point for television feeds from outside broadcast vehicles covering sport or other events. There was no design or plans for the RSC's, we inherited EMI switchers, Rank-Cintel flying spot slide scanners, Barco monitors and wooden control desks which Neel Smuts planning team had tacked on to TVC equipment orders.
The first task was to come up with a design, the second to figure out how we could utilize the equipment we had been given, and the order the rest of the equpment needed for the project.We faced some interesting challenges in the project:
- Design
The EMI switchers that had been ordered did not meet to the project needs, it meant we had to change their architecture and so rewiring the switcher backplane became one of the first tasks Theuns fondly remembers. We had to purchases extra modules to complete the task. - Reliability
The IVC 961 videotape machines were not very reliable and we ended up completly rewriting the VTR alignment procedure to solve the problem. A document that was then adopted by IVC. - Equipment Delivery
Delivery of the ordered equipment was always last minute resulting in the team making frequent flights to the RSC's taking the equipment as checked baggage. It was not unusual to check in with up to eight containers being several hundred pounds over weight. South African Airways loved us. - Installation
In the older buildings in Cape Town and Durban the RSC was being built on the second floor next to the radio main control. The Rank-Cintel slide scanner was a very large device weighing several hundred pounds, which could only be moved using a forklift. We shipped one to Durban and were very impressed to see when we arrived on site it had been installed in the RSC. When asked how they had achieved that we were told they had taken it apart and moved it piece by piece! It got really interesting when we tried to commission it, nothing worked. After many hours of fault diagnostics over two days we realized that when they had rebuilt the unit after moving it they had got many of the interconnection cables mixed up. - Training
One of the tasks we had in the project was the training of the local teams on the operation and maintenance of the equipment we had installed. - Work Hours
The project had all of the members of the team travelling weekly, sometimes to multiple sites, working extremely long hours. We did this for over six months, in an unusual move the SABC did however compensate us by paying us overtime. I remember the last project we had to complete, the TV studio in Parliament, this was done by mid January 1976, days after the TV launch. At that time we had already completed our work hour quota for January and were on overtime. It came as a surprise in February, when we were back on normal hours and found out how much we really earned.
- Design
- Design and build the TV studio in the Parliament buildings in Cape Town
This secure studio was remotely controlled from the RSC in Cape Town, only the cabinet minister and interviewer we in the studio. All aspects of the studio, that is camera, pan and tilt head, lens, video switching and lighting were remote controlled using a Evershed Power Optics (EPO) system. It was unique, being one of the first products to be based on intergrated circuits. Each printed circuit board (PCB) in the system consisted of five integrated circuits all device connections being routed to the PCB connector pins. Using wire wrap interconnections the required circuitry was built by inter-connecting the backplane connector pins. Theuns and I went over to EPO in the UK to acceptance test the system and for technical training. We then trained the engineers to support the system.
The building normally had security guards, after hours it was locked and if we were working late, which was usually the case we had a phone number to call when we wanted to get out. Theuns and I were working late one night and when it came time to leave we could not reach any of the guards to open the building. The studio and control room were on the second floor, the control room having a small balcony if you climbed out of the window. Our route out that evening was to climb down the face of the building using a loop of control cable looped through the balcony railing. We simply pulled the cable down once we reached the ground.
- Director General TV Roadshow
In the middle of 1975 Jan Swanepoel, Director General (DG), conducted a series of morning presentations in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban to show influential politicians and business people what to expect from the TV service to be introduced in a few months time. We flew in with him the day before and setup color TV monitors which we used to play back selected video material.
After the presentation he invited select members of the audience to join him for lunch, there were normally no more than 8 people at the lunch, one being Hein Jordaan who was in charge of public relations. I was lucky enough to be included in that inviation list. When we were Port Elizabeth the DG told me at breakfast that we would have a very promising rising star in the National party joining us for lunch. It turned out to be Barend Du Plessis, who later served in several Misterial posts in the South African govenment, including Minister of Finance. - Videotape machine issues at TVC
Meanwhile back at TVC the VTR section had run into major problems supporting the IVC 961 VTR's they were using for test transmissions. Managements solution was for us to be seconded to bail out the team at TVC, something I did not give in to as there was too much internal politics involved, their team was not interested in working with my team. The solution I offered, which was accepted, was that my team would take over that section of the VTR department for a week, re-align the VTR's together with their staff, effectively training them and getting their sign off. This solution worked well and we got back to our other tasks.