About Us
This image is a view of one of the work areas within our test lab. It shows a flow measurement unit under adjustment. The equipment rack to the right contains an RF signal generator, frequency counter plus the cesium clock and GPS frequency references as used for a clock performance monitoring system for a major Australian telecom company. Where applicable, our test and measurement instruments are frequency referenced to the cesium clock’s 10 MHz reference allowing frequency and time measurements to an extremely high precision.
TTS Systems was formed back in 1986 primarily involved with interfacing PC’s with industrial and scientific processes.
Over the years we developed several computer based monitoring/control systems using software built from early DOS based compilers such as Turbo Pascal up to complex Windows based applications using Agilent Vee and Borland Delphi.
Back in the early 90’s Trio Datacom (an Australian company) released their first 900 MHz radio modem, the DR900. We were appointed as a reseller for Trio’s products which gave us an opportunity to develop some value added telemetry applications based on the DR900. As a direct result we were awarded a contract to provide a major radio link based meteorological and hydrological monitoring system for North Forest Products in North Western Tasmania.
Several other projects including custom dynamometer systems for vehicle braking, compressed air engine starters, and the Irvine Vincent motor cycle engines have been developed under both a DOS and Windows platform.
Our entry into the amateur radio market was somewhat accidental in that an ‘N’ connector was needed late one Saturday afternoon to finish an antenna project. We normally stock these but on this occasion the bin was empty. My good lady Claureen (VK3KMB) was dispatched to a local ‘Hobby’ type electronics store and returned with a bag containing essentially ‘useless junk’ (not her fault she didn’t have a ham license then).
This got us thinking on how often other amateurs suffer with similar frustrations, and that we could easily offer higher grade connectors and cables to hams.
So here we are in 2015 with a fresh new web image! The world of amateur radio has changed since we started, products have been created then dropped, mergers and buy-outs have seen companies combine or fade away. New technologies have paved new opportunities. The VK Foundation license has been established and sadly CW was dropped from the license requirements. We still represent some of the major names in amateur radio like Buddipole Antennas, Spiderbeam fibreglass masts and beam antennas from Germany plus a range of antenna wire product from the US are fairly recent additions.
At a local level we provide Diamond Antennas, a range of industrial sensors, and Mean Well Power products.
We haven’t given up on the professional side of the business. Recent contracts with Telstra has seen us providing systems that monitor the performance of their network reference cesium clocks. It would still be a very lean existence if we relied on amateur radio sales alone to survive. We still however have fun and get to play with some very nice gear.
Dave VK3JKY and Claureen VK3KMB