Phil Wait's interest in electronics began in primary school. Like many boys of that era, he was fascinated by anything electrical: radios, batteries, switches and simple electronic circuits.

That curiosity eventually led to the High School Radio Club, part of the School Youth Radio Scheme of the 1960s and 1970s.

Like many young radio amateurs, countless lunch hours were spent searching Sydney's old army disposal stores for wartime electronic equipment and surplus components. Those boxes of valves, transformers and military electronics became an education in themselves, and many evenings (or days waged off school!) were spent building transmitters and experimenting with whatever could be made.

Phil Wait never left amateur radio, and continues to enjoy both its technical challenges and its camaraderie.

Learning the Fundamentals

After leaving school, two school mates and Phil Wait joined the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC - which later morphed into Telstra) as trainee technicians.

It was an exciting time to enter telecommunications. Australia was rapidly expanding its international communications network, and the training was practical, disciplined and thorough. It was also the leading edge of the modern electronics and communications era.

Those early years taught Phil that reliable engineering is rarely complicated. It comes from understanding the fundamentals and designing conservatively.

Research and Development

After several years Phil moved to the University of Sydney as a Laboratory Technical Officer in the Department of Physiology. The head of that engineering department, Don Larnach, was a brilliant engineer and mentor.

In addition to maintaining laboratory equipment, Phil designed and built specialised electronic instruments for medical and physiological research projects.

Later, Phil transferred to the University's Department of Electrical Engineering as a Senior Technical Officer, where he continued maintaining and developing electronic equipment for advanced engineering research.

Every project was different. Each required understanding the problem first, then developing practical engineering solutions.

Electronics Today International

In 1978 Phil became Project Manager of Electronics Today International (ETI) magazine.

Working alongside many of Australia's leading electronics designers, and under the Illustrious editorship of Roger Harrison and Managing Editor Colin Rivers, they developed approximately five home construction projects every month for more than 35,000 readers. 

Every project was designed, built, tested, documented, and published exactly as it was made in the workshop, and they all worked perfectly. This was well before the days of computer aided design and circuit board layout software, so it was a busy and creative place.

That reinforced one lesson that has stayed with Phil ever since: 

Design every project so that thousands of people can build it successfully.

Simple, logical, reliable.

VitalCall

Shortly after having time to contemplate his future as a crew member in a 3-month international yacht race (the 1980 Jakarta - Rotterdam Nedlloyd Spice Race), Phil acquired an infant medical alarm company called VitalCall together with a business partner, Paul Hanley.

What began as a very small business selling just alarm boxes, eventually grew into Australia’s premier medical alarm equipment and alarm monitoring service provider. Their aged-care facility nurse call systems were also sold in the USA and England.

Unlike most companies, VitalCall was totally vertically integrated. They designed the electronics, friend and fellow radio amateur 'Widge' Lowe wrote the software, they manufactured the equipment in their own surface mount production facility in Western Sydney, they installed systems throughout Australia through a sales force of over 100 local representatives, and monitored all emergency calls in their own 24/7 emergency call-centre staffed by nurses.

Over the 17 years of Phil's involvement, many hundreds of thousands of elderly Australians received assistance through VitalCall systems. VitalCall continues to thrive under its now long-time current owners, Chubb Fire and Security.

After the sale of VitalCall, Phil continued to manufacture medical alarm systems for the next 15 years.

Nothing reinforces the importance of engineering reliability more strongly than knowing that someone's safety may one day depend on equipment you designed.

Standards and Education

Phil Wait served on numerous Australian Standards committees responsible for areas including electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), medical alarm systems, and nurse call systems.

Until recently Phil servied as Chair of the Professional Emergency Response Services Limited (PERSL), the industry association for monitored medical alarm service providers.

Phil Wait and PERSL members were active in the Australian Telecommunications Aliance (ATA) during the introduction of the National Broadband Network (NBN) and played a vital role in ensuring that vulnerable Australians were not left disconnected during the transition to the NBN and mobile networks. All monitored medical alarm users were seamlessly transfered, at no cost to the user.

Phil also had the privilege of serving as Director and then President of the Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA), where education and technical publishing again became an important part of his work.

Today, Phil continues to serve on the WIA Education Committee and edits the Foundation Manual — Explore Amateur Radio — used by people studying to become licensed amateur radio operators throughout Australia.

Phil say's, helping people understand engineering has always been one of the most rewarding parts of his long career.

SpotFire Today

After many years in the medical alarm industry, and desperately wanting to avoid retirement, Phil returned to another lifelong interest—high-quality audio.

SpotFire brings together everything Phil learnt throughout his career.

Although a tube amplifier looks very different from a medical alarm, the engineering philosophy is remarkably similar: design conservatively, simplicity is king, measure everything, build for reliability, never stop learning.

Those principles guide every SpotFire amplifier and every article published in the SpotFire Engineering Library.

Our Philosophy

At SpotFire we believe that engineering should be understandable.

That is why we publish detailed technical articles explaining not only how our amplifiers work, but why they were designed the way they are.

Whether you are an experienced engineer, an enthusiastic home constructor or someone simply discovering tube audio for the first time, we hope the SpotFire Engineering Library helps you better understand the fascinating engineering behind music reproduction.

Thank you for visiting SpotFire. We hope you enjoy both the music and the engineering.