Engineering News | Terry Mackenzie-Hoy | Electrically Speaking

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Terry Mackenzie-hoy

Mackenzie-Hoy is a consulting acoustics and electrical engineer – machoy@iafrica.com

Speech transmission intelligibility

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 1st October 2021 It’s almost a given. At any function, on any TV broadcast, we will hear somebody speak. More likely than not, the speech will come across with an echo, which will make it hard to understand. Not impossible, just hard. But we concentrate, we listen, and we follow what is being said. It should not... →

The usual suspects

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 24th September 2021 In the film Casablanca, the resistance suspects are at an airport, trying to escape by aircraft. German soldiers are there. Rick, the anti-hero (Humphrey Bogart) shoots dead the German officer, Major Strasser, to stop him from interfering with the escapees. The French Chief of Police arrives,... →

Hospital engineering

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 17th September 2021 At about midnight, 35 years ago, in 1986, I travelled in my car down Athol avenue towards Glenhove road. Things changed and, when I became conscious, I was in the wreck of my car. I was badly injured. After a week, I could appreciate my situation: I was in the main orthopaedic ward of... →

South Africa’s power system

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 3rd September 2021 There are a few people who the media will call up to give an opinion on the South African power system. These persons are always referred to as energy experts, as in “according to energy expert Jonny Breakertrip” or whoever. In a way, this is unfortunate, since, of those persons quoted by the... →

Power system stability

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 27th August 2021 Recently I was asked what I meant when I said that the proposed Karpowership generation at Saldanha Bay would make the power system unstable. For those who don’t know, there is a consortium that proposes to solve the problem of a shortage of power generation in South Africa using three ships... →

Mackenzie-Hoy’s exploits

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 20th August 2021 No, no, not me. Benito Mussolini, who died in 1945, was an Italian political leader who became a dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. On June 11, 1940, he declared war on Britain and France and, as a first step, on September 13, the Italians invaded Egypt from their colony, Libya. The British... →

A brand-new theory

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 13th August 2021 When I was young, I worked on the gold mines. On many occasions, I worked in a chamber underground on 18 Level – which is 1 800 m below ground. Underground it was hot and humid. Very hot. The temperature increases by about 25 °C for every kilometre underground, which means it can be as high as 45... →

Protecting your house

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 6th August 2021 I was asked by a concerned citizen if it was okay to protect your house or property with an electric fence. Now, this is a very dangerous question: if I gaily said, yes, no problem, then it is possible that the person asking would end up killing somebody and the defence offered would be that a... →

Working from home

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 30th July 2021 Before I started this consulting practice in 1993, I had, like many, worked at other businesses. In general, I started work at some time between 07:30 and 08:30, had a tea break and a lunch break and finished at 16:30 or 17:00. Before and after work, there was a drive in traffic which, depending... →

Oh ancient art

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 23rd July 2021 About 50 years ago, I was at the Department of Internal Affairs in Johannesburg. I had waited for about two hours to be processed so as to be issued with a South African identity document. I had filled out the forms, I had the photos, I had my birth certificate. At the counter, the clerk looked... →

Moral responsibility

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 16th July 2021 I wrote two pieces for this column in which I stated that, in my experience, the Department of the Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) does not answer phone calls or reply to emails and that the DEFF doing something useful is an exception rather than a rule. Now I can take that back. Or at... →

An obscure profession

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 9th July 2021 Some may know that I trade as an acoustics engineer, not a ‘sound engineer’. As I recently reminded an attorney – the ‘sound engineer’ chews gum, has piercings and tattoos, wears dark glasses at night and operates a sound-mixing desk in a theatre. An acoustics engineer designs the acoustics and... →

Driving through the gap

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 2nd July 2021 Back in the day, consulting engineering firms were making money hand over fist. There were no black consulting engineers. Government handed out projects on a rota system. Fees were based on a percentage of contract value, so there was no incentive for consulting engineers to design anything... →

The carpetbaggers

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 25th June 2021 New people on the block, hoping to make a quick buck, were once named carpetbaggers. The term originated from the carpet bags (a form of cheap luggage made from carpet fabric) which many of these newcomers carried. The term came to be associated with opportunism and exploitation by outsiders.... →

Shoot the poor

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 18th June 2021 So there’s this film, see? A big mining company wants to dump mine tailings in a river. They’re keeping it all hush hush. But a brave and fearless person manages to find out their devious plan. The brave and fearless person finds secret documents which show that the dumping plan will pollute the... →

Aw, Snap!

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 11th June 2021 Wind turbines do not assist power system operation. They do not. Every so often, a power system collapses and it is the renewable-energy systems which cause the collapse. Wind turbines produce no power when there is no wind. Solar power systems are better but not at night time. This is blindingly... →

Refurbishing a crane

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 4th June 2021 Large cranes have many moving parts and quite complex systems. In general, travelling cranes supplied over the past 30 years have a driver who sat high up in a cabin. In the cabin are the levers and controls that link the crane operating components, which are, but not limited to, the following:... →

Chattanooga Choo Choo

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 28th May 2021 “Okay, children, I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was this place at the mouth of the Orange river, on the border of South Africa. At this place, there were diamonds on the ground, lots. So people began to collect the diamonds, and after a while a mine was started, and it was called... →

Energy costs spiral dive

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 21st May 2021 Professor Renfrew Christie wrote a book titled Electricity, Industry and Class in South Africa. This is a highly recommended book, especially for anybody interested in the, um, anthropology of electrification. In 1988, when I was working for State-owned power utility Eskom, it had just emerged... →

Cuban sanitation engineers

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 14th May 2021 We try to stay away from politics in this column. But. Und zis iz a big ‘but’. →

Welcome to Earth

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 7th May 2021 “Good morning and welcome to Earth. I know it’s been a long trip, but I am sure you are all excited to have finally arrived. I am going to answer some of your questions, some general and some about your new home, which, to remind us all, is at a location known as the Kalahari, in an area known as... →

A letter to André de Ruyter

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 30th April 2021 Dear Sir – I recall that, in 1940, the British Army had been defeated in France by the invading German army. The army retreated to Dunkirk, a French channel port. About 330 000 soldiers were picked up on the beaches and taken back to England. The last was taken off on June 4, 1940. Twenty-four... →

A missed call from you

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 23rd April 2021 Back in the day, as they say, Harden Beck, of the East London municipality, was the chief electrical engineer. I found out that the electrical engineering department of the city received many letters from the public. Harden recorded each letter and made sure that they were all answered. Moving... →

All in a day’s work

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 16th April 2021 We were at Richards Bay Minerals, getting a safety briefing. The safety officer explained: “Hey, we’ve got 14 types of snake here. Of these, 12 types are venomous, which is to say, if you get bitten, their poison will kill you. Of the 14, we have antiserum for six of them. For the rest, if you... →

Free, free at last!

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 2nd April 2021 What is a fact is that many people think that being off the grid, independent from Eskom, is very much more desirable than being connected to the grid. What is also a fact is that many people do not understand the simple basic fact that Eskom (when not load-shedding) is 90% reliable, while any... →

I’d like world peace, please

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 26th March 2021 It is a stock joke: every contestant in the Miss World contest is asked what she hopes for and the answer is, among other answers: “I’d like world peace . . .” It’s easy to mock. Sexism aside, beauty is an advantage (or not, ask Menelaus. Don’t know him? Look him up). →

Working from home

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 19th March 2021 A year ago, our President advised his fallow South Heficans that we would all have to stay at home for a bit. There are a lot of songs with the word ‘home’ in them. There’s Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound (Homeward bound I wish I was Homeward bound, Home where my thought’s escapin’, Home... →

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 12th March 2021 The telephone system in this country is currently worse than it was during the time of farm telephone lines. You don’t know what a farm telephone line is? (Or don’t know what a telephone or, indeed, what a farm is?) It was like this: a group of farms in a district were fitted with telephone... →

A weapon to end all wars

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 5th March 2021 Those of you who love karma or schadenfreude (as I do) probably have watched YouTube videos of Somali pirates being shot up by various warships. Schadenfreude is German and it’s made up of the words 'schaden', which means ‘harm’ or ‘damage’, and 'freude', which means ‘joy’. By definition, finding... →

All in 38 years

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 26th February 2021 In 1982, I was working for GEC Engineering Services, in Germiston. I reported to Pierre Ballot, who was an incredibly good engineer. My job was to test and commission electrical equipment that had been made by other GEC organisations. I don’t think I was very good at my job. The problem was that... →

Something to make you laugh

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 19th February 2021 I was on the witness stand as an expert witness. The applicant has submitted an affidavit that a power line conductor broke off and set the veld alight. He claims he has lost hectares of valuable grazing, to wit, Eragrostis Teff. His affidavit would make a sailor weep. Owing to the loss of... →

Great engineering failures

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 12th February 2021 I don’t believe in climate change. I recently mentioned this to a young adult American woman (23 years old). She said, “Uh, huh”, but clearly thought I was wrong. I said to her, look, it’s like this: the world always needs an enemy to fight. So we had ‘power lines cause cancer’, ‘bird flu’,... →

Being paid to whistle

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 5th February 2021 You may have seen Bianca Goodson (Smith) on TV or somewhere. She is the former Trillian CEO who testified how the company swindled Eskom and Transnet. As a result of her evidence at the Public Enterprises Committee’s inquiry into State capture, Eskom recovered a few millions from Trillian and... →

Power system dog maths

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 29th January 2021 ‘Dog Mathematics’ is mathematics you could teach a dog to do. The dog may not get it right, depending on the complexity, but it’s all real cute all the same. In 1998, I wrote to Eskom and said that, as far as I could see it, the utility would run out of power in about nine years – in 2007. Eskom... →

What makes people smart?

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 22nd January 2021 In May 1941, the city of London was bombed and the seat of Parliament, the House of Commons, was very badly damaged. When it was being rebuilt, Winston Churchill was asked if the original seating arrangement should be altered. He said not – the original seats had been such that government and... →

Running off a cliff

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 15th January 2021 Lemmings do not commit suicide. The little rodents throwing themselves off a cliff is mythical. However, this particular myth is based on actual lemming behaviours. When the concentration of lemmings becomes too high in one area, a large group migrates and may die in the migration process. The... →

Visually disturbing

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 11th December 2020 Members of the electrical engineering profession are guilty of disturbing the visual environment. You may not have realised this, but it is so. We erect power station chimney stacks that give off smoke, and we erect cooling towers that give off steam, which unreliable journalists tell the... →

Thirty days

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 4th December 2020 It was recently reported in this fine newspaper: “In an effort to ensure small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa survive the economic crisis, more than 50 large companies have formally committed to paying their SME suppliers within 30 days. The initiative, called #PayIn30, is... →

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