Rogues Gallery

How would you like this on your wall? This rat's nest supplied TV reception to about forty flats in a sheltered housing scheme. It was on a wall in the warden's flat, and over time had become accepted and thus effectively invisible. In a way I think the warden might even have been proud of it, in the way that the Victorians gloried in elaborate external plumbing on their buildings. Points of special interest are marked by an adjacent letter. (A) The modulator for the front porch camera. Operation of the lift would cause this unit to latch up, needing a 're-boot'. Note the pvc connector block below, necessary because the installer couldn't solder a phono plug. (B) A splitter, used to combine the modulator output-together with all its out-of-channel noise-with the aerial signals. A single channel filter/combiner would have done the job so much better. (C) This is a channel pass filter designed to pass all the analogue and digital channel clusters from the nearby high-powered local transmitter. It served no purpose whatsoever, because there are no other UHF signals within 30dB of the local ones, so there's nothing to filter out. The relative levels of all signals were correct as they came from the aerial. This filter was added ostensibly to 'convert the system for digital' by a contractor who had been sent to all the housing schemes in the country owned by this particular company. (D) As you can see, individual cables run from a variety of amplifiers and splitters to each flat. One of the cables must have had a nail through it because it was losing about 40dB, but rather than replace it someone had fitted this 28dB 'booster' in line with that feed. This lifted the signal levels to the point where a little bit of signal trickled through to the unfortunate tenant's TV set.

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