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TV Aerials through the years.


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There appears to have been a topic on the RMweb archive, but the site doesn’t seem to be active now, so I am going to ask the question again.
 

When did TV aerials appear on different buildings, and also what shape of aerials were used X, H and longer ones with the cross bars? Were small set top aerials used for a long time, or were internal loft aerials common?
 

For the younger modellers I can say that satellite dishes started to appear in the early 90s.
 

I ask as I am building a department store which has a HMV televisions window display and just as I am finishing off the roof I thought I had better check if it should have an aerial or aerials to be accurate. Here is a photo of the window display insert.
 

DeptStore73.jpg

 

I hope this might be of help and interest to other modellers too.

Jamie

Edited by Jamiel
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What date is your building? Pre-decimalisation implies that not everywhere would have UHF for TV so the small aerials we have today might not be present.

 

Where is your building? Different areas had different transmission arrangements in VHF days with separate aerials being required for BBC (often a H or X type) and ITV (smaller multi element Yagi). Some areas used horizontal aerials while others used vertical. Often BBC and ITV aerials would point in different directions because transmitter sites were not shared.

 

Date and place is key. A TV shop would of course be fitted with the latest type of aerial - and might be the only place with a BBC2 UHF aerial for those giant 26" dual standard TV sets!

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29 minutes ago, Jamiel said:

There appears to have been a topic on the RMweb archive, but the site doesn’t seem to be active now, so I am going to ask the question again.
 

When did TV aerials appear on different buildings, and also what shape of aerials were used X, H and longer ones with the cross bars? Were small set top aerials used for a long time, or were internal loft aerials common?
 

For the younger modellers I can say that satellite dishes started to appear in the early 90s.
 

 


Jamie

 

Not quite. They first appeared in number in the mid 1980s. The first UK satellite channels started in 1982. By 1990 nearly everyone by mine had one or cable.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_television

 

 

 

Jason

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7 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Not quite. They first appeared in number in the mid 1980s. The first UK satellite channels started in 1982. By 1990 nearly everyone by mine had one or cable.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_television

 

 

 

Jason

I remember watching satellite TV in Rackhams (House of Fraser) Birmingham, wayyyyy back.

No Sky or other such lightweight programming, no this was a political discussion in Russian (or so it appeared!) from a Soviet tractor factory:)

So pre- fall of the communist regimes.

Big dishes in those days because this was not domestic broadcasting from high-power satellites.

Edited by melmerby
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Yes, ITV aerials would be vertically polarised yagis on channel 10, and BBC aerials would typically be Antex 'X' type or yagi 'H' type on channel 2 pointing roughly towards Huddersfield for the Emley Moor (ITV) and Holme Moss (BBC) transmitters.

 

These aerials are quite typical of what you might see in Yorkshire. The small aerial is a later UHF type that would have been added after the introduction of BBC2 in 1966.

 

024.jpg

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Thanks for the replies.
 

Suzie, that is exactly what I was looking for. I will make a X or H aerial for the back of the store.

Dhjgreen - The Emily Moor transmitter information is interesting but doesn't seem to cover what the domestic aerials would have been like, how common they were, what types would have been common in the transmission area, etc. It is good on the history, and the especially the collapse of the tower due to ice in 1969.
 

Steam Southport - Satellite dishes were around in the 80s, but for modelling a street it was really the early 90s when the dishes started to be very common. Certainly that was the case when I lived in Hull between 1989 and 1994, I was one of the first on the street to get a dish in 1992, mostly to get American Football from Screen Sport, before Sky bought them out. By the mid/late 90s satellite dishes were very common. Getting the Premier League in 1992 was one of the big expansions for Sky. It does probably depend on where you live.
 

I know that one job for the visual effects team on the YTV show ‘Heartbeat’ was painting out satellite dishes to give the period feel for the street views, that was the early 2000’s.
 

I have looked at photographs of shops and town roofs from the 50s and 60s, but it seems that if there were exterior aerials they were hidden at the back of buildings, or at least they were not easily visible from the street.

I did find this discussion which is quite god for the period.
https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/15005-h-x-tv-aerials/

Jamie

Edited by Jamiel
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32 minutes ago, Suzie said:

The 'H' or 'X' aerials are for BBC only, you still need the ITV one as well for the period you are modelling.

Unless the viewer hadn't "converted" their TV or bought a new dual band one.

Quite a lot of folk didn't change immediately.

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Thanks again for the info. I'll post a picture of the aerials when I have made and fitted them. I do like adding this sort of detail to buildings as I feel it makes them feel like a real place.

For the department store I presume they would have all the channels to impress customers so it will be a dual aerial.

Jamie

Edited by Jamiel
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2 hours ago, Suzie said:

Date and place is key. A TV shop would of course be fitted with the latest type of aerial - and might be the only place with a BBC2 UHF aerial for those giant 26" dual standard TV sets!

We had one of those dual standard TVs in about 1968 - Dad got one just a year or two old from someone at his office who was moving to Australia. 25" (and Monochrome, of course) though, but still big for the time. The changeover button from 405 to 625 lines used to make a very satisfying clunk. Our TV aerials were in the loft, but not everyone on the street did that and some used the little set-top aerials, so I reckon reception must have been pretty good.

Edited by BernardTPM
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2 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

 The changeover button from 405 to 625 lines used to make a very satisfying clunk.

Some dual standard sets used a huge multi-contact slide switch for swapping the various coils etc in/out of circuit for the two different, incompatible systems.

They were often operated by a large solenoid coil, which would be the large clunk you hear.

Before the dual standard TVs were the dual band TVs with both band 1 and band 3 coverage.

Intially many people just had a convertor to get the ITV signal on their existing Band 1 TV before changing to a dual band TV covering both stations.

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12 hours ago, Suzie said:

The 'H' or 'X' aerials are for BBC only, you still need the ITV one as well for the period you are modelling.

 

Down in Kent, (mid/late 60's early 7o's) we had one of the big H aerials fixed to the back of our house. This aerial picked up BBC1, BBC2 and ITV on our black and white TV. In 1972 my dad bought a coloured TV, we had to have the aerial changed to a more modern type for that.

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I saw a layout (4mm) at the Norwich show which had working large screen TVs in a shop window, made, I believe from the minature screen from a broken camcorder.

 

Dad went into a TV Shop in Salisbury  in 1971 when the person in front said they wanted a new colour TV to take with them to Benbecula in the Hebrides. Dad was just back from there (first trip) and pointed out they only had BW 405line BBC1 only, served from a transmitter on Skye which covered large areas of the mainland as well... It stayed that way for a long time, for beyond our tour out there till 1975.

When I got posted there myself in 1983  they had just got colour BBC1 + ITV, BBC2, and CH4 all at the same time from a local transmitter, which I could see on it's mountain in North Uist, from my barrack room on Benbecula, my TV Aerial was about 3 inches of copper wire any more and the TV overloaded..

So what type of aerial you have, depends on when and WHERE you are modelling..

 

It's recorded that when LMS changed the Highland Railways round point rodding to U channel, much of Inverness gained Radio aerials made from the old point rodding.. I wonder if any modern TV aerials are still clamped to Highland Railways point rodding.

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There is a further possibility. Our local authority banned externally visible aerials and had a 'piped aerial' installed. This was of very low signal quality; and since my Pa was an electronics engineer and an enthusiast for all things broadcast (from his infancy on Java with DIY crystal radio) we had a set of aerials in the loft space for much superior reception. My job was to jump up there making small position adjustments to the aerials and then getting clear, while Pa assessed the results downstairs.

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1 hour ago, sandwich station said:

 

Down in Kent, (mid/late 60's early 7o's) we had one of the big H aerials fixed to the back of our house. This aerial picked up BBC1, BBC2 and ITV on our black and white TV. In 1972 my dad bought a coloured TV, we had to have the aerial changed to a more modern type for that.

Most of the signal was probably being picked up by the downlead as the large X & H were way out of band for BBC2!

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I was replying to this the other day when I got interrupted by SWMBO.

 

As others have said, the reply would vary a lot according to region/date. There would still be many households without TV at all in the 1962 period that the OP is referencing.

 

I think TV arrived in our household in 1963 (mid-Surrey). Initially an internal aerial - for about a week until Dad could no longer stand the poor picture quality and an aerial was fitted on the chimney stack.

 

In 1969, we moved to the London suburbs (West Wickham). Signal there was so strong from the Crystal Palace masts that aerials had to be in the loft and masked by roof timbers.

 

When I moved to Shaftesbury, I was surprised to see aerials pointed in three different directions according to which local news broadcast people want to watch.

 

 

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When we first had tv (for the Coronation) dad didn't know anything about aerials and being familiar with long wire aerials used on radios,  just put up a length of co-ax with nothing on the end,  needless to say the picture wasn't very good.

Fotunately we were in Birmingham which had a strong signal from Sutton Coldfield, else we wouldn't have seen anything.:jester:

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I remember BBC2 coming on air. Dad bought a new B&W Telly, there was a switch on it marked 405 / 625 lines if I remember. BBC2 needed a different aerial, Dad made one out of bits of copper strip and a length of wood. It worked but to change channel we had to change the aerial at the back of the telly and then change channel then finally flick the above mentioned switch !!!

 

Happy days ---

 

Brit15

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Yes, not all homes had a TV back then, and many of those that did have a TV were fed by cable (e.g. Redifussion).

 

Radio aerials would be more common then, although these were often just a length of wire strung between adjacent chimney stacks. FM radio aerials in the 1970's were similar to the Yagi in the previous picture, but mounted horizontal. Electrical engineering students at Bath University were competing with each other to get the best signal from the then new Capital Radio in London.

 

When dad first rented a colour set, the guy that installed it was surprised when he got a perfect picture with just his screwdriver stuck in the back. We told him to look out of the window which had an uninterrupted view of Brighton's Race Hill transmitter on the other side of the valley.

 

I spent some time in the mid-1970's in Applecross, near Kyle of Lochalsch. The hotel TV only received BBC1 in black and white.

 

 

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From the information posted here I was able to do a better Google search and discovered this thread which is really good for aerial examples dating from the 405 line era.

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9777

Thanks for all the contributions.

I will post a picture of the aerial when I have made and fitted it.

Jamie

Edited by Jamiel
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3 hours ago, Ian Morgan said:

Yes, not all homes had a TV back then, and many of those that did have a TV were fed by cable (e.g. Redifussion).

 

Radio aerials would be more common then, although these were often just a length of wire strung between adjacent chimney stacks. FM radio aerials in the 1970's were similar to the Yagi in the previous picture, but mounted horizontal. Electrical engineering students at Bath University were competing with each other to get the best signal from the then new Capital Radio in London.

 

When dad first rented a colour set, the guy that installed it was surprised when he got a perfect picture with just his screwdriver stuck in the back. We told him to look out of the window which had an uninterrupted view of Brighton's Race Hill transmitter on the other side of the valley.

 

I spent some time in the mid-1970's in Applecross, near Kyle of Lochalsch. The hotel TV only received BBC1 in black and white.

 

 

When BBC2 first came to Cambridge, there was a repeater station on the gasworks site between Newmarket Road & the river. We lived on the other side of the river in Chesterton. We had an aerial outside for 405 lines, but to get BBC2 on 625, I had a reel of solder standing behind the tv, and plugged that into the ae socket. Good picture; anything "better" for an aerial actually wiped out the picture.

 

Stewart

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On 24/04/2019 at 09:17, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

There is a further possibility. Our local authority banned externally visible aerials and had a 'piped aerial' installed. This was of very low signal quality; and since my Pa was an electronics engineer and an enthusiast for all things broadcast (from his infancy on Java with DIY crystal radio) we had a set of aerials in the loft space for much superior reception. My job was to jump up there making small position adjustments to the aerials and then getting clear, while Pa assessed the results downstairs.

 

Castle Combe [Dr Doolottle fame] had an arial ban, and the fil-makers had to cough up for a mast on the hill, piped into every haous in the village.

 

Regards

 

Julian

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