Albert's Attic Gallery

Until Roger Bunney unearthed this I had no idea that UHF tests were taking place as early as 1958. The Crystal Palace transmission was on frequencies roughly equivalent to the present-day channel 43, so not surprisingly the aerial shown looks rather like a narrowband array designed for somewhere in the middle of Group B. I wonder why there are only five elements. The Band III aerials of the time had as many as 13 elements on a single boom, so I would have thought that the designers of this prototype would have automatically conceptualised a long yagi. Apparently there was a five plus five stacked version, which seems odd for the same reason.

I believe the tests were 405 line, and I wonder how they were received. Were UHF tuners generally available, or were the signals down-converted to Band III?

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