Back to Blog Home

Since I was in Salt Lake City on business, I couldn’t resist popping in to Marshall Radio Telemetry to check out how telemetry is manufactured. (Plus I had heard the Robert Bagley is an excellent host.) It was definitely worth my while.

Faceplates to Field Marshalls

Marshall still has the feel of a garage-based operation, small enough and friendly enough to pop in and say hello and talk shop yet with plenty of in-house heavy equipment and professional attitude. Most of the magic is made right on the premises these days, which is why you get your equipment so quickly. In the old days, many components were contracted out and an emergency order still involved a wait. (Done that once or twice over the years) Now you can often get what you need overnight. (for a price) And yet, Marshall is still the sort of place where R&D as well as ongoing improvements are sparked from interacting with clients and friends, a place where R&D still looks like a lot of fun.

Field Marshall Beginnings

The most impressive part of the visit though was of course, the machinery and the oodles of bits and pieces that come together like a puzzle and become our equipment. Much of what is made may look like plastic, but it is actually aluminium that has been annodized. The aluminium comes in blocks which has to be tooled in order to create the beginnings of components.

The remaining aluminium is recycled and although the metal doesn’t get a very good price, Robert promised me that it was enough to go into the coffee can for the annual office party.  Some of the parts are tumbled with small river rock-like bits of ceramic to smooth sharp edges, giving the parts that slippery plastic feel once it has been finished. All of the writing is also lasered on to the parts in the shop.

The Thinking Part

When everything is pulled together into the equipment you are used to seeing in your hands, the folks at Marshall still aren’t done. The electronics are tested, every single one, so that Marshall can feel confident that the product is reliable. This testing involves running the receiver for 48 hours, making sure that the receiver reads frequencies exactly as it is meant to. Electronics are also put into a climate controlled machine that runs the equipment through extreme temperatures to make sure solders hold and nothing in the component is weak and likely to break in the field.  There’s even a testing room, specially lined to make it possible to check signals on collars and falconry transmitters.

 If you do find yourself with a faulty piece of a equipment, when it arrives back at Marshall, someone is playing CSI, doing their best to figure what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again. I get the impression that they like a good puzzle or a challenge. (Especially when they find a solution.)

Tracking Collars

If you use their tracking collars, which I do and I love them, they are given the same thorough treatment. Marshall’s decision to create a collar that can run on standard AA batteries has definitely endeared them to the hound and pointer communities. And the lighted version is a real bonus to anyone who is running hounds. As a falconer, there’s a real convenience in being able to track the dogs and falcons on the same receiver. I just had no idea how many steps it took to create a single collar.

It was fascinating to see how all the pieces were tooled, anodized, lasered and assembled into the equipment that is such an important tool in my falconry. When I saw the million dollar piece of machinery that makes the tooling and therefore assembly a reasonable endeavor and realized how much effort went into creating the products,  I didn’t feel so bad about the expense.  Plus, the whole operation is just fascinating.

Next….the future of falconry telemetry…