A
wire had to be fixed into the connections on the aerial before we
erected it. I was used to ordinary wireless aerial wire, but this
was quite different. It had a thin inner core covered in white plastic.
This was enclosed in a sort of woven tube of fine copper. This in
turn was enclosed in a brown outer cover. I was told that this was
special television aerial wire, called co-axial cable.
First job, put the ladders up and go and inspect the chimney. Was
it sound enough to carry such a thing? It was a ten-pot chimney,
two rows of five pots, went well above the roof and was in good
condition. We started to make preparations. We spliced the metal
eyes onto one end of each of the wire ropes. Charlie went back to
the yard for two more short roof ladders. These were not roof ladders
like those in use today, but were made at the yard of slate laths
with a bit of four by two nailed on the end. He also brought back
some wire cutters because the pliers in my tool bag would not cut
the thick wire that we had to put round the chimney. I had another
read of the instructions, then we made a start. Charlie went up
the ladder first to get round the far side of the chimney. He took
with him three bent bits of plate that the instructions said were
to go on the corners of the chimney under the wire. I took the brackets
with the hook bolts, the wire, a spanner and wire cutters in my
pocket. I held the first bracket onto the corner of the chimney
with one end of the wire on the hook bolt. Charlie took the other
end and after pulling it as tight as he could bent the wire at each
corner and finally got it round the other hook bolt. Now came the
difficult bit, cutting the wire to length and then untwisting each
strand in turn and wrapping it round the wire to make a splice.
With the corner bits in place we spannered up the hook bolts and
soon it was nice and tight. We repeated the whole procedure for
the other bracket, which we fixed about eighteen inches below the
first one. It wasn't quite so bad doing the second one because at
least we had the first one to hang on to. This had all taken longer
to do than we thought it would, and it was well past our dinnertime
so the next thing was to get the kettle on and we had our snap.
After dinner we hauled the aerial, now on its mast, onto the roof,
The whole thing was very heavy and unwieldy. The newfangled coaxial
cable was very springy, not very flexible at all, and it kept getting
tangled up, but somehow we fitted the bottom of the mast into the
brackets. The shop owner came out with what turned out to be a compass
in his hand. He told us that the aerial had to be turned to point
in the right direction. I turned the aerial in the direction he
said according to his compass reading. "The short rods have
to be nearest to Birmingham," he said. As I sat on the roof
people were looking up and pointing as the aerial glinted in the
sun. One man shouted 'What is it?' Van drivers pulled up to have
a look.
Now the aerial had to be fine-tuned directionally. The shop man
was in the shop with the back door open, Charlie was in the yard,
I was on the roof. The messages started coming up. 'To the right
a bit', 'a bit more', and such like. There were long periods when
the shop man was fiddling with the television set's controls and
I had nothing to do. This went on for about an hour. Eventually
the shop man seemed satisfied and I came down the ladder and went
into the shop to have a look this television set. It was in a back
room behind the shop on a workbench, not in a cabinet or anything.
A little screen about nine inches across glowed bluey-green and
seemed to have a few shadowy figures in a swirling snowstorm. A
trackless1 went past and the picture disintegrated into a lot of
sparks. I was not impressed. Who would want to sit in a darkened
room watching that? But the shop owner was highly delighted. 'I'll
work on it and get it better' he said. I went up on the roof to
make sure that all the bolts were tight. We took down the ladders
and loaded up the handcart. Little did I realise what that day's
work would lead to in later life.
(1) Trackless: an electrically powered bus, like a tram but without
rails.
Continued  |
|
 Albert
a few years before he fixed his first television aerial. |
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