SK: Pat Hawker MBE G3VA

[VK2ZRH]

Sad to hear of the passing of Pat Hawker. The RSGB advise that he passed away on 21 February. He was 90 years old.

I first heard of Pat and read some of his articles during the late-1960s, when I was a student at RMIT. The library had copies of the RSGB's "Radio Communications" magazine; he also wrote for "Wireless World".

In the 1970s, when I worked at IPS Radio & Space Services, the library there had subscriptions to RadComm and Wireless World and I always made a point of devouring Pat Hawker's articles.

In the mid-70s, my boss, Dr Leo McNamara, and I were interviewed by Pat Hawker by phone from the UK, about the work we were doing at IPS on VHF Transequatorial Propagation.

In later years, when I was Editor of Electronics Today International and then Australian Electronics Monthly, Pat and I exchanged letters about various technical things.

I still have one of Pat's books in my personal library.

A brief note is on the RSGB website here: http://www.rsgb.org/news/articlelinks.php?id=0451

Vale Pat Hawker MBE G3VA

73, Roger Harrison VK2ZRH

[VK3ALB]

Very sad. He was a wealth of information.

[VK3YE]

Pat Hawkers books

Also an avid reader. Flicked through his books only this morning for another purpose.

I'd often dip into them when wanting a circuit idea. More recently after getting the 50 years collection one could follow the endless debates about magnetic loop antennas (confirmed effective though with varying opinions on efficiency) and later cross field/EH antennas (confirmed as duds). A quick peek inside some of his books is at: http://youtu.be/EyWOPD00vys?t=4m57s

Without him various proponents and opponents would have just talked past each other. His columns provided a forum and a means for ordinary amateurs to weigh up competing claims. Pat's doubts were generally fair. Without people like Pat we could have become as stupid and undiscriminating as golden ear audiophiles with their green pens, valve amps, polarised oxygen free speaker cables and other voodoo.

He was a man of his time and the war years (he was in intelligence reception) had a lasting impact. In particular the value of CW, regenerative receivers and valves. This preference lasted well after most had gone to SSB, digital and solid state but the skepticism did encourage people to measure the new before uncritically accepting it (eg problems caused by synthesiser noise in receivers and weak front ends in early transistor gear).

I gained from his writings and lament his passing.