Ian Darney BSc MIET, November 1937 – December 2021
Published: Fri 11 Feb 2022
Ian Darney sadly passed away on 26 December 2021.
Ian grew up in Kinlochleven, which was the first town in the UK to have all the houses connected to mains electricity.
His father worked as an industrial chemist in the local aluminium smelting factory and as a child,
Ian enjoyed hiking in the surroundings of the Pap of Glencoe, swimming in the Blackwater reservoir and riding horses from local farms.
He distinguished himself in mathematics and science and went on to read Electrical Engineering at Glasgow University, where as a student apprentice he constructed his first valve radio.
His colleagues advised him to drill a hole in the chassis, fit a solder tag and connect all the return conductors to that terminal. The radio operated well enough apart from a constant hum from the speaker due to interference from the 50Hz power supply.
He graduated in 1960 with a BSc and moved to Bristol, where he spent the next 35 years of his career with BAE Systems. It was in Bristol that he also met his wife of 57 years and brought up two children.
His first role was in guidance systems for missiles, primarily the Martel missile training apparatus at British Aerospace.
He then moved to space systems, working on the photon detector assembly (the heart of the Hubble Space Telescope) and designed partial discharge test equipment for the high voltage supplies to the camera and image intensifier.
Ian later transferred to the Airbus Division and collaborated with many engineers from across the world in his role as BAE Bristol’s representative on the Eurocae and RTCA working groups.
The former is the organisation that defines requirements for the protection of aircraft from the indirect effects of lightning in Europe and the latter in the United States.
Ian enjoyed the cross-cultural dialogue concerning electrical safety on aircraft with his fellow engineers and was fascinated by the different cultures working together on a common project.
During his retirement, Ian continued his special interest in electromagnetic compatibility, sparked from his work as a student apprentice and to which he continued investigation throughout his career.
Ian published a book with the IET in 2013 on his special interest subject titled, Circuit Modeling for Electromagnetic Compatibility.
He has also published a number of articles concerning the propagation of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and revoking the concepts underlying ‘Grounding Philosophy’, which he argued were erroneous and the prime cause for the vast majority of interference problems.
Ian enjoyed many discussions that arose from engineers questioning his reasoning during the peer review process.