Dr. David Proctor died at the age of 88 years on September 26th, 2020 after a long illness. David spent most of his career with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, where he became a noted lightning researcher. His major innovation in this field was developing techniques using time-of-arrival radio location from the VHF pulses emitted by lightning channels as they propagated. He built a wide-baseline network of radio receivers that transmitted the pulses back to a central station, where they were recorded photographically. In the pre-computer era, data analysis involved manual correlation of photographic traces - a project that took David and his assistants (that also included his wife) many days. He was the first researcher to publish 3D time-resolved images of lightning channels and to identify the region in thunderclouds where they originated. He was also the first researcher to correlate the origin of lightning with precipitation inside thunderclouds. The VHF technique he pioneered is now used by many lightning researchers around the world, although modern electronics and computers can now render these images in real time. With his projects significantly underfunded, David was a skillful master in improvisation and construction of the equipment needed for his research. Always ingenious, he acquired a US surplus military radar set and converted it into a weather radar. As a friend and colleague of David also involved in lightning research, I spent some time observing his operation at his research station. His reputation as an innovator and original researcher is well deserved. A lifelong radio amateur, he also constructed much of his own equipment, including a tower, antennas and radio equipment. David was a real gentleman - always friendly and helpful to others. He was my mentor when I first became licensed as a radio amateur in South Africa and was a great help in my mastering the Morse code. He is survived by his wife, Judy, and four sons. Mike AF7ON (ex ZS6BUF)
