Back when I had escaped the tyranny of dealing with the general public I got a job as a driver
and an assistant field survey technician for Hutchison Communications, the company that would later be rebranded 'Orange'.

Driving a Discovery I'd transport the lead tech up to a site where the planners decided one cell would be best served by the mast. To check its viability we'd tow a temporary mast (15 or 45 metre telescopic on an trailer)up the muddy Welsh hillside in question, erect the mast and secure it with guy ropes attached to metre-long metal pickets banged into the ground with a sledgehammer. On the top of the mast was an antenna hooked into a 1.86GHz signal generator in the base to simulate a cell base station signal. Getting up these muddy Welsh hillsides is why the vehicle of choice was a 4x4 of proper offroading ability -but even then when you're towing an extra 1.5 tons of telescopic mast things could get hairy, so the car had the mandatory winch fitted.

Then I'd drive a route around the perimeter of the proposed cell and the lead tech would read and log the signal strength to see if it would suffice.

The disco had been extensively modified, behind the back seat was the spectrum analyser, receiver, monochrome 80 column text display laptop logging the position (using a LORAN receiver or whatever the precursor of GPS was) and field strength to be mapped later on back at base. To facilitate this rather hefty parasitic load on the 12V systems a second alternator was fitted to the engine just for the electronics.

Other times we'd go to a newly built mast before the network was open to the public, drive around the cell perimeter again but instead, dial in on the network to a selection of answerphones that had been loaded with speaking books, so as to simulate voice traffic, and note if there were any dropped calls and noting if there was the proper handover from one sector to the next as you went around the mast.

Finally at some time we'd put a xenon high intensity lamp on top of a 15 metre mast and another team would put a similar mast where the proposed line-of-site microwave link was supposed to be established and remotely trip a film camera (before digitals existed) on top of the other mast to snap in the direction of the first map- developing the film later the picture would show a tiiiiiiny little pinprick of light to show there was nothing in between the proposed microwave link.

All good fun, vaguely outdoorsy, lots of man-banter and some interesting tales from my lead tech who used to be in REME and had been around the world etc.

All fine and good, except two months in my gran had a stroke. The hospital she was taken to was about 20 miles away from where I lived in Edgbaston so I asked if I could borrow the survey vehicle overnight to visit her as I had no car at the time and the public transport would have stranded me from getting home.

I dutifully went up to visit gran, then coming home realised I had nothing in for tea, so I went to park up behind Edgbaston Tesco.

Oh hang on, it says 'maximum height 6 feet 6 inches' at the entrance to the car park. There's a rigid steel bar across the top of the entrance. This is a Land Rover Discovery, the roofline is pretty tall....flip down the sun visor where I was sure there was a sticker saying how high the car was. 196cm? That's (doing mental arithmetic) about the same.... maybe if I slide under it slowly it'll be alright?

Driving cautiously at about 0.3mph I tried to edge under the sign- so far so good. OK, must have made it. Nudged up to 1mph.

With a sickening screech the base of the LORAN antenna (which stood an extra two inches above the roofline and I'd completely forgotten about) transmitted the force of meeting the steel bar through to the roof of the Discovery, which buckled along the width of the car and the sheared base (screw-mounted into the roof instead of magmounted) and antenna dropped off onto the floor.

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.

Backed up and out, retrieved the antenna, drove off home gloomy about the prospect of a bollocking in the morning.

Next day I turned up to work before anyone else and tried to obtain a replacement LORAN antenna but it was no good- the base was knackered and the folded roofline was obvious to anyone with a working set of eyeballs. I came clean to the lead tech and fortunately that day the job didn't need positional information so we busied about getting the day's work done.

Returned to base at the end of the day to be summoned to see the manager. "Sit down" he said with quiet menace.

Very quietly he explained to me that the car would be out of commission for a few days while repairs were made- the team's target would slip ,and I shouldn't have gone out again in the same car. I was hopeful that this was a dressing down but it culminated in 'You're a liability. Get out.'

Rather upset I left to get the train back home. Small Heath train station was grim at the best of times but that day it had the black gloom of despair to add to its charm.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 29 May 2014, 19:03, 1 reply)

I have one very tiny problem with this story. Hutchison Whampoa and all it's trading names did not
rebrand Hutchinson Communications (worldwide paging, worldwide fixed line, broadband, vpns the list goes on) to Orange - the brand name was Orange and then that brand became it's own incarnation of a PLC when Hutchison Whampoa floated it. To my knowledge the division Hutchison Communications still exists and is quite happy and in the UK it's brand is 3.
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Thu 29 May 2014, 22:08, closed)

At the time Hutchison was moving its money out of HK prior to the hand over to China.
As a worker at the coal face I didn't know too much about the politics up at the top. My brother stayed on for many years as a network performance management chimp. One day it was Hutchison, the next it was out they had decided to rebrand themselves as Orange prior to the public launch. I can't say with certainty that maybe one division span off into a separate entity but...that's not the point of the confessional.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 29 May 2014, 22:33, closed)

Yes, yes I see. Sorry. Finally connected in my head.
They, the subset, became Orange, Whampoa continued in their original boots. I'm an engineer. Branding is outside of my area of experience. Every few months you get new letterheads sent round for official use.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 30 May 2014, 0:47, closed)