Meet......Rob Longley
By Erin Nuytten

 

2004 marked Rob Longley’s thirtieth year working for the Government of Canada. He signed on with the Department of Communications right after graduating from Moose Jaw’s Saskatchewan Technical Institute, now known as the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology or SIAST. He has been a Spectrum Management Officer throughout, working in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Saskatoon. From 1974-1978, Rob worked in the Winnipeg Regional Office where “we had a total of 54 staff and a perpetual thick blue cloud hung [in the air] from all the smokers.” My how times have changed!
 

Rob’s love of radio technology began when he was a child. His father was a wireless air gunner during his Air Force wartime years, and was very skilled using Morse Code. “I remember how fascinated I was as a young boy, sitting with him in front of a huge tube powered Telefunken...as he would begin to transform the stream of ‘dits’ and ‘dahs’ into a legible message.”

 

Currently, Rob’s primary responsibilities include certification of broadcast stations operating in Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. He is also the regional lead for radio stations operating in the High Frequency (HF) band (below 30 MHz) and Non-Directional Beacons (NDB), which are used for aircraft navigation. Back when Rob started working on the NDB portfolio in the 1970's, they did not have computer programs, such as MapInfo, to keep track of where all the NDB’s were located. Instead, they used a map of Western Canada that occupied an entire wall in the office and coloured pushpins to track the movements of NDB’s.

During his time with the Winnipeg office, Rob took several trips to Churchill, MB. It was there that he met his wife, Sonya. They have three children and two grandchildren and love living in Saskatoon because they are close to family. A few years back, Rob became a year round cycling commuter - with the biggest challenge being to keep his ski goggles from frosting up when it’s -40 outside!