Smart Kingan, oracle of Pacific technological change

Orbituary

By Arnold Stanbury

Stuart Kingan was bom in Dunedin, New Zealand on April 12, 1915. Soon afterwards the family moved to a farm at Prebbleton, near Christchurch. He finished primary schooling as dux of Prebbleton Primary School and moved on to Christchurch Boys High School where he became very interested in radio.

In 1932 he gained University Entrance and obtained his Amateur Radio License as ZL3GD.

Two years later, as a student at Otago University, using his own equipment, he pioneered investigations into the ionosphere, making first measurements in New Zealand. These experiments were published in the August 1934 issue of the amateur radio magazine Break In.

After a move to Christchurch in 1936 he was encouraged by Professor Coleridge Farr in his attempt to reflect VHP radio signals off the moon. This experiment was widely reported in the newspapers of the day but the equipment then available was not sensitive enough. In 1937 he worked with a new ionospheric programme at the University of Canterbury under Professor FWG White. After a short break working at the radiation laboratory, then run by the NZ Cancer Campaign Society, he returned to full time study of the ionosphere.

In 1942 he developed a manually operated ionosonde for field observations at Raoul Island.

It was while working there he came up with a suggestion that an observatory in Rarotonga could run in conjuction with the American one in Hawaii to make extremely useful observations.

In 1944 the International Radio Propagation Conference in Washington DC recommended that this be implemented. The result was that Stuart moved to Rarotonga which was to become his permanent home.

He married Tereapii Robati in 1949, and they raised three daughters, a feeding son and an adopted son. In 1957, following recommendations of the Belshaw-Stace report, Stuart was employed in the new Department of Social Development, first as Visual Aids Officer, then as Information Officer and later as Acting Secretary. By then it had been renamed the Department of Internal Affairs.

But during that time he conducted classes in radio and physics and his enthusiastic students constructed the first transmitter that was the

beginning of Radio Cook Islands. In 1971 he was transferred to the Scientific Research Division of the Premiers department and remained as head until his death in January this year. Cook Islands Premier Albert Henry, and his successor Prime Minister Tom Davis, both relied on Stuart’s advice on telecommunications and they made full use of the dial-up radio links to the outer islands that he had designed and built This service was completely reliable and he had the rewarding effect of doubling the export earnings of some islands simply because they then knew exactly when to have their produce ready for the irregular ship visits.

This network was enhanced by the new satellite technology of Peacesat, the educational satellite communications started by Professor John Bystron at the University of Hawaii. In 1972 Stuart, assisted by Tony Utanga, built equipment that enabled Rarotonga to join the network. For a number of years he was president of the Peacesat Consortium Council, and from 1975 to 1979 was a member of the Pacific Science Council.

He helped the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and the South Pacific Commission with their satellite network. This involved a lot of travel around the Pacific dealing with their satellite network.

As a founding member of the Pacific Telecommunications Council, he served on its board of trustees and was appointed to the International Board of Advisers of the Satellite Communications Users Conference in the USA.

Much of the day to day operations of both the local and satellite networks was carried out by his late wife, Terepii. This included a major part of the communications with the ocean canoes Hokule’a, Te Aurere, Te Au-O-Tonga, Takitumu and others including the 1985 to 1987 voyage of rediscovery when Hokule’a made the return trip from Hawaii to New Zealand.

Over the last 20 years Stuart represented the Cook Islands at many conferences and meetings world-wide, presenting papers on communications, energy development, radio science and Pacific Island affairs. He attended the 1979 World Administration Radio Conference in Geneva and in 1982 he represented the New Zealand government at Unispace 82 in Vienna.

He will be remembered for his contributions to higher education in the Cook Islands through the teaching of science particularly physics, mathematics, electronics and amateur radio. He initiated public broadcasting and provided a news service and was editor and photographer for the Cook Island Press. He was a founding member of the Cook Island Library and Museum Society, and served a term as president He remained, until his death, an active member of the society.

Much of his “spare time” was spent on continued radio research. He had, for many years, worked in conjunction with the Stanford Research Institute of California, on the study of VHP transequatorial propagation.

For the last four years he had had also been working with the University of Colarado, Boulder, to set up an experiment using radio techniques to measure mesopheric winds (50km to 80km above the earth). Both of these experiments use the unique relationship between Rarotonga and Hawaii that Stuart was aware of back in 1942.

The present project requires an aerial system covering six acres and it must be said he was actively working on the planning and the physical erection of the aerials until his death.

Stuart was one of a handfrxl of people involved in the survey of the much publicised manganese nodules found on the sea bed around the Cook Islands. The research started back in the early 70s under the auspices of CCOP/SOPAC and Stuart’s association with it began in 1975.

He has summarised the findings of an extensive survey of the resource in a book Manganese Nodules of the Cook Islands published by the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC) in September 1998. A man of many of talents, Stuart will be remembered as a quiet, unassuming, always helpful individual.

He had no time for frivolous social activities - there were always so many interesting things to do, so many challenges, problems to solve, observations to pursue. He was not interested in financial gain or public accolades. His reward was a good conclusion, a new finding, a satisfied customer. He was one of those of whom it can be said that the world is a better place for his having lived here. ■