The Grintek Group which until recently was listed on the JSE, had its origins in 1963 when the well-known British company formed Racal SMD in 1963. This later became Racal Electronics SA which was acquired in 1978 by the Grinaker Group to form the basis of Grinaker Electronics which later became part of the Anglovaal Group of companies in 1981.
Listed in its own right the company continued to grow with a total staff today of 1300 people and the company embraced BEE as long ago as 1995 with the signing of an agreement with Kunene Brothers Holdings who eventually had a stake of some 30% in the company. Over the last few years, following the decision to purchase fighter aircraft from Sweden, Saab had steadily increased its shareholding in Grintek and particularly its subsidiary Avitronics and this culminated during 2005 with the purchase of the company by Saab (and its delisting from the JSE) but with the Kunene Brothers still holding 29,7% of the equity.
Grinaker as a company today has two main divisions, namely Grintek Technologies and Grintek Defence and this article will focus on one of the companies in the latter division, namely Grinaker Communications Systems (GCS).
GCS specialises in tactical defence communications systems for foot soldiers, armoured vehicles, aircraft and naval vessels. Its systems provide for ground-to-ground, ground-to-air and ground-to-sea communication. In terms of modern frequency-hopping radio technology Grinaker claims to have been the first to introduce this for military communications and still believes that it is ahead of its international competition in this technology. The success of the local company's products are in evidence from the markets they have managed to penetrate. These include much of Africa and South America, the whole of the Far East stretching from India to China, various countries in Europe and also, Australia. GCS employs some 250 people located in Pretoria and Cape Town.
While designs are in-house, GCS outsources all the basics such as populated PCBs and focuses on the assembly and testing of the radio units and other devices. As the more demanding products are specified to operate between
-30°C and +70°C, GCS has several walk-in environmental chambers where radios are operated and monitored for a period of time through temperature cycling. A water bath where air is pumped into the units is used for leak testing, and the assembled radios are subjected to a range of other electrical and electronic test parameters. Shock and vibration testing is also carried out on all products.
The company's flagship radio product is the TR2400 new generation HF transceiver family. This family offers exceptionally high rate frequency-hopping and is based on the latest digital signal processing (DSP) technology. The frequency range is 1,6 to 30 MHz. Depending on application the radio can be used as a 25 W manpack, or in a 100 W vehicle/base station configuration. 400 W options are also available. The TR2400 is supported through a variety of peripheral devices. These include 2-wire remote control, various power sources, message terminals for data transfer, message handling and GPS, Morse key, portable dipole antenna and a vehicle mounting tray.
A second manpack transceiver offered by GCS is its TR600, and while it does not hop as fast, it has a much wider frequency range of 20 to 400 MHz. The TR600 is claimed to be the smallest and lightest multimode manpack transceiver currently available in the world. The radio offers all the conventional modulation modes and this, together with the wide bandwidth, enables it to be used in ground-to-ground, air and maritime operations. Apart from military users the radio is also suitable for use by other civilian emergency services including police, ambulance, coastguard and fire services. Together with its battery, this 30 W nominal transceiver weighs just 6,2 kg. The battery is a 13,2 V rechargeable NiCad pack.
Another area where GCS has been very active is in airborne transceivers that are fully interoperable with its range of ground-based products. It offers the TR2800 HF series with 100 and 400 W versions together with the relevant ATUs, power amplifier and a general control panel. These transceivers feature DSP technology and frequency-hopping and make use of state-of-the-art techniques to minimise HF noise and interference. Like most of the company's radio products, use is made of digital voice enhancement and reliable DSP squelch that provides a quality of communications allowing use of these HF radios for both short and long range applications. This equipment is expected to be integrated into the new helicopters and fighter aircraft being purchased by the SAAF.
GCS also produces the GUS 1000 airborne communication and management system that comprises a communications management unit (CMU) general control panel. This system is customised to meet the user's operational requirements and can be deployed in everything from light aircraft to helicopters and from fighters to transport and maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
The other radio product offered by GCS is its SRR 330 which is a third generation short range radio suitable for example for artillery crews, intercom around armoured vehicles or for infantry groups or parachutists. All users would have an SRR 330 with headset for communication within a conference group of up to 15 people. One SRR would be designated as the master for automatic synchronisation of the network into a frequency hopping group. Up to 20 groups can operate in a co-located area without interference. The weight of the SSR 330 is a mere 250 g.
GCS has developed another interesting device called the Personal Direction Finder (PDF) which is a small, light (367 g), robust handheld radio direction finder. In use this is combined with a second device, the RM 320 beacon. In a paratrooper drop at night the commander would carry the beacon and his troops would be able to converge on his position using their PDFs. The range is 3 to 4 km over most types of terrain, including mountains, and about 15 km over water. Another application for paratroopers is where vehicles and/or supply containers are being dropped separately. In this situation the beacon would be located on the separately-dropped item and troops would find the location of these again using the PDFs with the beacons operating on different frequencies (900 different channels are available).
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