Andrew Moseley, a second year apprentice at Thomas Keating Ltd, has received the Engineering Star Apprentice 2022 award from Crawley College. The award was given due to Andrew's hard work and quality of task parts that he produced in both milling and turning as part of his Mechanical Engineering level 2 course work. '' Andrew has already become an important member of the TK team.'' says Simon Duke , Toolroom Manager. ''He has shown a high degree of engineering understanding which can be seen in the high quality work that he produces.'' In his introduction, Instructor Mike Coles mentions his "Persistence" and his "Rising to a challenge" The Video can be seen here of Andrew Mo...
In August 2022 we delivered the third and final QON for the Microwave Sounder instrument (MWS). This is part of the ESA/EUMETSAT MetOp Second Generation series of weather satellites. Along with a set of spares this brings some seven years of work (nearly!) to a close. Huge thanks go to Dr Adam Woodcraft - the MWS QON long serving Project Manager - for delivering this project along with a host of colleagues from TK and our subcontractors. The QON (Quasi-Optical Network) is the heart of the MWS instrument, collecting radio signals from the atmosphere and routing it to the appropriate receivers (which thankfully are not our responsibility). Almost every component of the QON was manufactured in ...
TK has sucessfully moved to a new laboratory and realigned the HiPER 94 GHz high power Spectrometer Bridge that we supplied a decade ago to the Pacific Northwet National Lab - a US DoE facility - in Richland, WA. Thanks to PNNL colleagues Davd Hoyt and Eric Walter for their great support
Although it looks just like any undistinguished box arriving and leaving TK, this box contain the last of the three Quasi-Optical Networks design, built tested by TK for Eumetsat Metop-SG Microwave Sounder (MWS). A good six years work..... Delivered to AIRBUS D&S in Portsmouth, it will form the center of the FM3 version of MWS. Around it are just a few of the people who helped build it: Parts of the QON are gold plated, but is value is actually significantly higher than its total weight in gold.
The VDI/TK collaboration - some 7 years since Mt Rainier - took Jeffrey Hesler and Lucy and Richard Wylde in May 2022 onto the Mulanje Massive in the south of Malawi - and to climb Sapitwa - at 3002 M (Though some maps have 2998 M) .... Quite a tough climb for Richard over Granite Slab - an new experience, and with the wrong boots on... Left to right: David Foot, Richard & Lucy Wylde and Jeffrey Hesler The area was made famous by Laurens van der Post's 1952 book of the same name
The GrACE G-band 199 GHz Radar, based at the Chilbolton Observatory in southern England - with a QO frontend and antenna designed and built by TK - continues to perform well: Peter Huggard of RAL kind sent us the following image of ice clouds, and commented (The x-scale is time in seconds) "Top of the screen is 8 km, so the returns are from about 4 km to 6.5 km. Not bad for less than 200 mW transmitted power".