Backhaul, February 2015: the industry 25 and 10 years ago

25 YEARS AGO. The cover of the February/March 1990 issue of What's New in Radio Communications featured a whole slew of Ni-Cad batteries, produced by Alexander Manufacturing and distributed in Australia by RF Industries. Feature stories included the results of Melbourne City Council's decision to add Sigtec Automatic Number Identification to its fleet of mobile radios, and the advantages to be gained from using DTMF in two-way radio comms. Other news included the delivery of $400m worth of Australian-made Plessey RAVEN combat radios to the ADF, and a $4.5m contract for AAP Reuters Communications to supply Hughes satellite comms to the then Civil Aviation Authority.

10 YEARS AGO. The cover of the January/February 2005 issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific featured the Icom IC-F43G, one selling point for which was its Li-ion battery … no more 'difficult' Ni-Cads to worry about. The feature articles seemed mainly to be about antennas, with Dr Daniel Wojtkowiak describing the problem of increasing interference from the proliferation of microwave devices and mobile networks, and Andrew Emmerson from Alan Dick explaining the growing trend of disguising antennas as trees and other odd shapes. For the tech heads there was also an in-depth look at the monitoring and sequencing of supply voltages.

Elsewhere in the magazine: We helped celebrate the 85th birthday of Sir Angus Tait, founder of Tait Electronics; we warned students at the Uni of WA that parking inspectors were now equipped with radio units to send infringement notices to the uni's central office in real time; and we revealed that the RAAF had installed a 60-tonne turntable at its base in Edinburgh, SA, for use in radar testing of aircraft.