Origin of product names

The origin of product names, supplied by WEBB Industries

Train antenna name

The TRD train antennas were named after the team involved in the initial development of Webb’s train locomotive antennas:

• Terry Reuss, a professional engineer at WEBB for the last 40 years. 
• Russell Bowers, Webb’s production manager of yesteryear.
• Denny Shinegold, a Jewish man, also made all the jigs in our factory around 1994. The red, Red oxide-painted jigs are still in use today.

Phew! Talk about a diverse rainbow nation! The only surviving member of the trio is Terry Reuss, who is still actively busy at the wheel.

 

Mobile antenna names

The VAB in our military mobile antennas range is short for:

• Vehicle
• Antenna
• Base

 

Base station antenna names

ALJ was Andy Harris’s call sign; however, this product did not survive. Andy was an engineer at Webb.

FST was Neville Kogh’s call sign. He was the MD of Jasco International. Today, we still use this name for our HF Radios’ travelling wave dipole antennas for fixed base stations.

SiteMaster® collinear antennas (SM) was WEBB Industries’ first registered antenna brand name. 

The FDC in our dipole antenna range is short for:

• Folded
• Dipole
• Casting

In our naming convention for antennas, the median frequency value follows the product name. This applies only to antennas that cover one frequency band. For example, the HD400 dipole antenna, where the letters H & D denote Heavy Duty, and the 400 is the median frequency value for frequencies ranging from 380 MHz up to 470 MHz. 

 

Combination mobile antenna names

WASP is WEBB’s name for heavy-duty mobile vehicle antennas instead of the ‘bee stings’ used on cars. It is still actively used today.

HORNET was the next name for a variation on the WASP antennas. This product also died out.

VENUS antennas were born and named by Paul & Kobie Richards.

 

In the case of combination mobile antennas, the naming of products is more involved. 

For example:

Because a VENUS918 can cover a combination of GSM Frequency bands, such as the GSM 900 and 1800 bands, we required a naming convention that differentiates between each band’s connectors and cable lengths. Cliff Viljoen and Margherita Nel invented the naming convention, which uses a whole sequence of codes that denote the various parameters, as follows:

Frequency/GPS Connector/GSM connector/Other connector/cable length.

Examples:

VENUS GC 918/SM/TM/Z/0.5, where the G indicates GPS and the C indicates Cellular (AKA GSM 900 & 1800)

Mini MICA 918/SM/FM/Z-4, where 918 indicates GSM 900 and GSM1800, the SM indicates an SMA male connector on the GPS cable, the FM indicates an FME male on the GSM cable (which covers both the 900 and 1800 frequency bands), the Z = no other connector, and a 4 m cable length.

For a complete list of these names, please refer to this spreadsheet:

WEBB’s Specialised Combination Mobile Antennas

 

Connector abbreviations

The ERP software we used for invoicing and accounts limited the number of characters one could use. For that reason, Webb devised naming conventions to shorten connector names.

 

This naming convention is unique to WEBB product descriptions, for example:

• BNC Male became BM
• BNC Female Bulkhead became BFM
• SMA Male became SM 

 

For a complete list of all names, please see the tab ‘abbr Connectors’ on 

WEBB Data/Specs Index