Aerial photography - Ancient Gallery

During
the ‘colour boom’ of the mid-1970s the rental companies
were doing massive amounts of business. Since virtually every
new colour renter needed a new aerial we riggers had plenty of
work, especially if we had an arrangement with DER or Radio Rentals
or one of the other big players. In the lead up to Christmas it
was possible to make huge amounts of money if you were prepared
to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. And being young and
fit, that’s pretty well what I did. One of the problems
of that time was the existence of these rather strange aerials.
They were branded as ‘Telefusion’ and were for a time
used by DER’s own installers.
When the work was contracted
out later to the likes of me there were thousands of these aerials
in use. Most were mounted on steel masts that had rusted through,
and the renters expected a cheap (or even free) repair. Now these
aerials were built like a tank, and if it hadn’t been for
the cheap steel masts would have lasted forever. To replace the
mast with an aluminium one involved hacksawing through the U bolts
in the chimney bracket and cutting off the old mastclamp. This
was a bit of a performance sometimes, and then there was the worry
that the very heavy aerial, with its huge reflector, would catch
the wind and snap the new mast. I discovered that it was possible
to fold back the reflector’s top and bottom thirds, greatly
reducing the windage, with no effect on reception.
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