It is hard to imagine that a handful of decades ago, TV wasn’t a thing. We’ve talked a few times about the birth of television. After an admittedly slow slow start, it took over like wildfire. Of course, anything that sells millions will spawn accessories. Some may be great. Then there are others.
We wanted to take a nostalgic look back at some of the strange add-ons people used to put on or in their TVs. Sure, VCRs, DVD players, and video game consoles were popular. But we were thinking a little more obscure than that.
Rabbit Ears
Every once in a while, we see an ad or a box in a store touting the ability to get great TV programming for free. Invariably, it is a USB device that lets you watch free streaming channels or it is an antenna. There was a time when nearly all TVs had “rabbit ears” — so called because they made an inverted V on the top of your set.
These dipoles were telescoping and you were supposed to adjust them to fit the TV station you were watching but everyone “knew” that you wanted them as long as possible at all times. Holding one end of them gave it a ground and would give you a major improvement in picture. People also liked to wrap tin foil around the tips. Was it like a capacitive hat? We aren’t sure.
The better rabbit ears had knobs and switches along with multiple elements. If you lived close to a TV station, you probably didn’t need much. If you didn’t, no number of fancy add-ons would likely help you.
External Antenna with Rotator
If you really wanted to get TV from a distance, you needed an outside antenna. Most of these were either yagi or log periodic designs. That means they were very directional. The also means you probably needed a way to rotate it. If you were lucky, all the TV stations were in the same direction from you. Then you didn’t need to rotate your antenna. Some UHF-only antennas looked like dishes and they, too, were directional.
Rotators were crazy. They were all a little different, but typically you’d move a big knob to the direction you wanted the antenna pointing. Then you’d hear CHUNK, CHUNK, CHUNK as the antenna actually moved. This was a cheap form of stepper motor. Some rotators used something akin to a selsyn to move continuously, but most just moved to a few dozen points around a circle. Hams still use modern versions of antenna rotators to adjust directional antennas.
CRT Brightener
The most expensive part of any old TV was the picture tube. These tubes were fragile and expensive to make and ship, so it was often the case that if the ‘tube went out, it was cheaper to just buy a new TV.
When a picture tube started to go dark, you could sometimes run a high voltage through it to restore it (you being a TV repairman with the equipment to do it). Or, you could try installing a CRT brightener. These devices looked a little like tubes. You’d remove the connector from the CRT’s neck and install the device. Then, the wire that used to plug into the CRT would plug into the other side of the device.
These were essentially little transformers that boosted the AC voltage going to the filaments. They worked for a while, but it probably meant a new TV wasn’t far in your future. If you want to know more than you could possibly imagine about how these work, there was an article in Radio Electronics written by someone who worked for a company that made them, and it goes into incredible detail. [Chris] shows us a 1950s TV that had one of these in it. You could actually stack these one on top the other if you wanted to take your chances and try to keep the old TV working as long as possible.
Ghost Eliminator
According to a Layfayette Electronics catalog the Rembrandt TV Ghost Eliminator “Electrically rotates the polar-receiving pattern of your existing antenna and phases the ground wave picked up by the electrical wiring system with the sky wave picked up by the antenna.” What?
As far as we can tell, these units were just attenuators, which reduced weaker signals below the receiver’s ability to find them.
Tuner Rebuild and Cleaners
One of the key components of a TV was the tuner. Because of the high frequencies and the low technology of the day, these were usually a compact unit that was directly behind the knob you used to change channels. The output of the tuner was relatively a low-frequency signal at the intermediate frequency, and that’s what the rest of the TV used.
It was difficult to make broadband devices back then, so the tuners usually had banks of tuned circuits, and a giant mechanical switch selected the ones you wanted. That’s why you turned the knob to pick the channel you wanted. With contacts like that, they eventually get dirty. Contact cleaners for tuners were common and probably contained a lot of things you aren’t allowed to put in spray cans today. Tun-O-Foam was one common brand.
But if you really had trouble with your tuner, you could pull it out and send it to one of the many companies that would clean and service it for a low price. For a little more, you could buy a refurbished tuner from the same people. They’d always advertise a low price but note that tubes, transistors, and diodes were charged “at cost.” Shipping, too, usually. The reality is that most tuners probably needed a good cleaning and, perhaps, a realignment.
Tube Testers/Tube Guard
You’ve probably heard us talk about tube testers before. One thing that is the enemy of tubes is inrush current. A cold filament draws more current than a hot filament, so tubes get a big jolt of current while they are warming up. The “Tube Guard” was a device you plugged into the wall and then plugged the TV into it. It would prevent fast inrush current. Maybe that would save you a trip to the tube tester at the local drugstore.
You could go into many drugstores and other retail places and find a tube tester. There was usually a book or some other way to look up your tube. The book would tell you to put in socket #8 and set switch 1 to F, switch 2 to A, and so on. Then you’d push a button and big meter would move a needle to a green region if the tube was good or a red region if it was bad. Of course, that wasn’t foolproof, but it did work much of the time since tubes have common failure modes.
If the tube was bad, you’d open the bottom of the tester, find the replacement tube and take it to the register. There were also portable units that service people might carry, like the one in the video below. Like many of the meters, it didn’t have a book, but it had a scroll that you would roll to find the right settings. However, a typical retail store tube tester was usually easier to use than these specialized units.
That’s Not All
There are plenty of other TV gadgets. We mentioned the old VCRs, DVDs, and video games, of course. But there were also color wheels, magnifying screens and more. We’ve even seen boxes that claim to convert your TV into a video phone.
You could get a box that would censor swear words. You could even get pay TV in the 1960s if you were willing to put coins into your set.
Many of the images in this post are from scans of old magazines and catalogs from the World Radio History site. A great resource if you enjoy looking at the way things were. The featured image, however, is a still of “1950s TV set“, a 3D model by [Kathrin&Christian].
I just learned that antenna rotors are apparently considered retro, and something your TV no longer needs, by Hackaday. Weird, they were a fixture of my (recent, rural) childhood, and my parents very much still need one to receive all the channels in the area.
It’s an unfortunate reality that stories rarely recognize that people who live in rural areas may still need support systems unnecessary in urban areas.
One of the main reasons that some trucks still have metal antennas so that they can receive AM radio.
Same thing with rabbit ears – not everybody wants to pay monthly for cable, and yes, you can still receive TV signals THROUGH THE AIR.
But not with rabbit ears.
Those were VHF antennas.
All modern TV is UHF.
You want the old loop.
You can find easily antennas with both rabbit ears and a figure-8 loop with a reflector for VHF-UHF reception and if you are in a strong signal area they work. Living half a mile of a TV transmitter I can receive some channel sticking a piece of wire in the antenna connector. I don’t remember VHF only rabbit ears.
Work the math on the frequencies yourself.
Typical Rabbit ears are multiple UHF wavelengths long.
If the laws of physics don’t convince you…
Old TVs had separate VHF and UHF connectors.
You connected the loop to UHF, the rabbit ears to VHF.
After walking uphill, both ways, to the TV.
I think they made coax connectors with both terminal sets, right up until analog TV went away.
Many rabbit ear antennas have nested sections that allow length to be adjusted over a 4:1 range. Simple dipoles also work on the second harmonic and some of the higher harmonics, Even with the length set wrongly for a particular channel, there will be some response — a strong signal can be viewed.
The math to figure out an antenna’s response is horribly complex. Better to use a program like xnec2c than do calculations by hand.
HaHa: That’s not how physics works; a several-segment telescoping antenna that’s multiple UHF wavelengths long and can be pointed across a wide range of directions is basically guaranteed to have a combination of adjustments which produces a lobe in whatever direction you want. In reality, you don’t generally need that for RX, but it is still valid. It’s just that the beam pattern of an antenna that’s several-halves-plus-a-quarter wavelengths long is more complex than none-and-a-quarter.
That being said, there’s no reason you can’t split it so that people have less fiddling to do, or can use a more purpose-designed antenna for each, so they certainly did. And I imagine a lot of stuff, like impedance transformers, coax, etc, was not built for UHF and so you needed something new for UHF while you could use the same old VHF you already had.
I am at this moment watching PBS on RF channel 11 (VHF). When the atmospherics are right, I can watch WMUR on RF channel 9, also VHF.
I’ve had a couple of amplified antennas that were a waste of money, but always got acceptable reception of digital channels through a cheap set of rabbit ears. Extendable “ears” and a fixed loop on a plastic base. Still needs a little adjustment, but probably works better than the “HD” antennas. (They charge yo an extra $20 for the “HD” on the box.) That said, there hasn’t been anything worth watching with them for over a decade.
Supposedly modern panel antennas have better gain. I wouldn’t know since there just isn’t any signal with a mountain between me and the city.
Fairly hard edge on the ridgeline? Might be able to get it with enough gain and an amplifier. Knife edge diffraction, you know.
Same, and I’m not even that rural. I don’t feel like most streaming services offer enough value for money, but I still want to get local channels occasionally. Inexpensive antenna, WinTV USB stick, Plex, and voila – my own streaming service.
Antenna rotors (or rotators) are still being used in amateur radio.
How else would you turn big antennas, such as yagi antennas or shortwave beams?
Send your eight-year-old up to the roof. Try to remember to turn off the transmitter first.
He’ll freeze up there without the RF.
He? What about equality? Could also been a girl, as well, hm?
In the 70s?
No it could not have been a girl.
In fact, it was basically always me, the oldest boy.
To be fair, it was me that dug out the shortwave receiver and wanted to play with it. I’d already been up there, stringing an antenna with my dad.
Remember my parents were Germans. Having no ‘woman’s liberation’ hippie type nonsense.
I was at Woodstock BTW. The ‘rents saw the freak show and detoured before the traffic got really bad.
You’re likely trying making fun of it (or me), but such jobs for the young really existed.
Lookout boys used to work on sailing ships, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout
In other countries, 6 years olds -or generally small children- had (or have) to work in mines. Not funny.
https://www.worldvision.ca/stories/child-protection/life-of-child-miner
Your dad never sent you up on the roof to help point the antenna?
That’s neglect.
How did you grow up to be capable?
Was an extension of ‘TV remote’. Also kids, 1 star, always changes to Godzilla or HR Puffenstuff.
“Your dad never sent you up on the roof to help point the antenna?”
He had an W3DZZ shortwave antenna, I think and no need for a rotor/rotator. A beam wasn’t allowed in the neighborhood, sadly.
Our terrestrial TV antenna did not require a rotor, either, it was an hi-gain type (lots of elements) and was pointing to the primary TV transmitter in the region.
By the 80s, my dad had received satellite TV in addition to terrestrial TV, so terrestrial TV nolonger was as important.
Except during bad weather (rain, storms) in which no proper satellite reception was possible.
Both the satellite receiver and the terrestrial antenna were being connected to the VCR.
The sat receiver was connected to the VCR via AV cables, the antenna directly via RF jack. An VHF/UHF antenna amplifier was mounted directly below the roof, also, I vaguely remember.
It was used because the coaxial cable had to run through the whole house, way down to the living room.
“How did you grow up to be capable?”
Who said I did? Anyway, I was climbing (more or less) the cherry tree once in a while to fix the coil for the 80m mono band antenna.
It was housed in a little box and the coil needed a bit of maintenance from time to time.
Mainly the metal contacts of the lustre terminals suffered from corrosion (terminals for aerial, grounding, coaxial cable).
The coil itself was doing transformation to 50 ohms, as well as extending the antenna electrically (antenna was end-fed).
The other end of the antenna was tied up in a tall tree.
A friend of our family did climb up that tree once, he was a free-time climber sort of. Must have been 12 to 15 metres.
The climbing I did was mostly happening below the roof.
Because, there was no ladder that reached all the way up to the upper storage (attic).
You had to climb the ladder, then you had to pull yourself up with your arms and hope that you won’t loose your grip, slip and break your spine.
Up there in the attic (upper part) there was not enough height to walk, so you had to crawl on all fours. There was a metal pole next to the entry to the attic, going through the roof, which the TV antenna was mounted.
An old, rusty antenna was mounted near the end of the attic (next to a small window) which my father had installed when he himself was 16 or so? It was an HB9CV type.
Anyway, I was installing my 11m band dipole up there. It did fit badly, but it somehow did.
It did contain a coaxial stub and the PL connector was installed in a white Kodak film can made of plastic.
A bit later, I also installed a 2m band groundplane up there. It was a 2D type (1 aerial, 2 counterpoise elements) and made from spare telescopic antennas.
In my youngest years, when I was 6 or 7, I was throwing a long wire antenna out of the window in my parent’s bed room.
One end was tied up at the knob of the window, the other end was tied up at the garden fence.
I was using it to listen to music with my crystal radio. It was a simple model made for kids (was kit sold in a penny market).
It didn’t contain a variable capacitor, but a coil with a metal bead
The ear piece was a crystal headphone, high impedance.
The most tedious work was to wind up the medium wave coil all by myself.
It was a lot of coated copper wire and I wasn’t allowed to get any knots into the windings.
I was so happy when I was done. The next tricky part (to me at age 6) was to install the metal bead correctly. It had to be mounted in a way so it would scratch the coil as intended and tap it.
Gratefully, the supplied manual had lotsof pictures in it. My reading skills weren’t as developed back then.
Nowadays there are DSP based amplifiers that could be connected to different antennas and selectively amplify a TV channel from an antenna or another. Easy and not expensive. In the analog time to get the same result one had to install a narrowband channel amplifier for every channel one wanted to receive and connect the input from the given antenna.
I live far enough away from the center of the metropolitan area that all of the TV transmitters within range are, and have always been, in the same direction, well within the main lobe of any directional TV antenna. Yet, a significant portion of the houses nearby that still have their TV antennas up have rotators. I’d love to see the process that led to that.
Did some local electronics store give really good commissions on selling them? Were they packaged with the higher-end antennas, and most buyers installed them because they were there? Were antenna installers going door to door and up-selling useless rotators with the antenna install? Also, were people rotating their antennas a few degrees back and forth to pick up an extra dbW of signal, or did they immediately realize how useless the rotator was?
“Were people rotating their antennas a few degrees back and forth to pick up an extra dbW of signal …”? Um, yeah, I was the family “manual antenna rotator” that climbed our roof with a Realistic 3-channel walkie talkie and help bring in the chosen signals to as sharp as possible during special events, such as the bowl games. It was cheaper to use no-wage labor(me) than buying a fancy electric rotator.
As far as tube testing went, you NEVER trusted new tubes from the tube tester cabinets until you had the salesman open up the box and test the “new” tube on the same tester that showed one or more of your old tubes as weak. It was surprising how often I had to say “well, looks like my old tube tests just as good as your new tube, no need to replace it then”, and it was off to another store with the tubes rattling in the back of my Schwinn Typhoon two-speed.
NFL blackout rules.
You could often get a game from a neighboring city that is locally blacked out.
We got the best results getting VHF from one city and UHF from another. They were 90° apart. We were used the rotor daily until we finally just turned the UHF antenna 90° on the pole.
“Inverted V”? Not sure how you are setting yours up, but my rabbit ears are in a normal V configuration.
“Contact cleaners for tuners were common and probably contained a lot of things you aren’t allowed to put in spray cans today. ”
Blue Stuff and Blue Shower,
my repair kit had both.
I bought a portable tube tester at a yard/garage/tag sale about 10 years ago, along with a carrying case with vacuum tubes. Comes in handy on occasion.
I still remember the smell of Blue Shower. It worked pretty well. We’d often get TVs in with tuners that didn’t work well, or at all. The customer had tried cleaning the tuner themselves with the wrong lubricant, which detuned the coils. A good hosing down with Blue Shower fixed it. I found that lubricant in the cleaner spray was rarely if ever needed, instead a good cleaning with Blue Shower, and tiny dabs of tuner grease on the contacts, applied with a small screwdriver did the trick.
It was also Tun-o-wash we used in the shop. So many tuners to clean. Sprays did not work for long, so we offered the extra take it apart service where we manually scrubbed the rotary switches. Some tuner spray cleaners had abrasives in them, so use that then a solvent washout.
We were all pretty high afterwards those CFC’s and toxic fumes, carcinogenic chemicals made the shop unbearable.
Apparently not.
https://trea.com/information/input-weighted-transversal-filter-tv-ghost-eliminator/patentgrant/71bc1f96-6cbf-44df-a4e2-f3b4bc6000f3
And “phases the ground wave” has an obvious interpretation.
I doubt the $10 boxes at Radio Shack and the Rembrandt had that much going on in them. But maybe. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TV_ghost_eliminator.agr.jpg
It wasn’t very long ago that my parents had a directional antenna that was rotated by hand to get a good signal. We had a chain-link fence top rail stood up against the roof peak with a strap that allowed rotation. The antenna was fixed on top. Someone at the base could rotate the whole pole by hand and another person inside would yell when the picture was good.
A family member who lived in the rural south east had his antenna pole mounted by a window where they could stand and look at their TV set. They’d open the window and grab the pole to twist it until the picture cleared up. They were still doing this into the early 2000s until someone gave them an old analog rotating unit they could put by their recliner.
Never could convince them satellite TV was worth the monthly bill.
Sigh… long gone are the fluke-of-history decades spanned by the movie Back to the Future, when you could take a color “camcorder” (portable video camera/recorder) from 1985 connect it to an old black and white TV from 1955 … and … it … would … still … work!
I miss that compatibility.
A snowy analog TV channel is better than digital fragmentation where you see jigsaw bits on your TV (or NO SIGNAL) and all you hear is:
“…ip…op-ut….at’”
I used to hold rabbit ears when I was home sick from school so Mom could watch her stories.
Clearly there was some effect…it’s why—of all paranormal “powers” dowsing almost seems believable…the “magnet in your nose”…rabbit ears…metal detectors, etc.
Sola made transformers specifically for stabilizing the line voltage fed into TV’s; mine was rated to take in 95-130 and output up to 300 watts at a more regulated AC voltage. The one I have was a model 7202, but various ones exist as examples of what you can do with a saturable magnetic core and no tubes or transistors.
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Lafayette-Catalogs/Lafayette-Catalog-3-55-1955.pdf has a small blurb on page 23, although there is a better catalog image floating around somewhere. Other related items are visible on the same page; limiters, manual options, etc.
https://archive.org/details/TNM_Constant-voltage_SOLA_transformers_-_SOLA_Ele_20170913_0078/mode/2up also relevant.
Old school rabbit ears (especially powered ones) and external rotator antennas work better to pick up OTA stations than the low-quality “HD” antennas they sell these days.
You still need an antenna for over the air TV and the same types of antennas you used 50 years ago still work fine today. The antennas can be a lot smaller now since most stations are on UHF.
Rotors are not very practical for digital TV since no one seems to make a tuner that lets you combine multiple channel scans. Now you have to use multiple antennas and a combiner if you have stations in different directions that are too weak for an omnidirectional antenna. Old TV antenna rotors work great for smaller VHF & UHF ham radio antennas though. I have 2 meter and 70 cm yagi antennas on mine.
The software in TVs leaves a lot to be desired. Some models do allow the manual addition of channels after a scan, and might even remember the added channels the next time the TV is turned on.
The tuners didn’t always got better, though.
Higher end TVs from the mid-20th century were very sensitive, but also could handle strong signals.
There was a TV DXing sub hobby in ham radio, were SWLs (BCLs) did collect test images from all over the world.
Nowadays TV tuners are nolonger being made with terrestrial TV signals in mind.
Instead, the TV makers assume that a crystal clear cable TV connection is used.
Interference, intermodulation, mirror images and other anomalies are not being taken into account.
Older, high-end TVs had been made with TVI in mind and did contain filters, as it should be expected.
It’s not that modern TVs don’t have them anymore per se, but it must be TVs made for a third-world country were interference is everywhere.
By contrast, TVs made in western world from circa 1980s and up don’t always have such mandatory filters anymore, to reduce cost.
Because filters are expensive, see noisy switching-PSUs.
There was a “gentlemen’s agreement” sort off between “FCC” (its international equivalents) and TV makers:
if a user reports an interference, it can call the TV maker and that maker then installs a TVI filter free of charge.
That’s at least how it was in my home country. Too bad users didn’t know about this circumstances.
In practice, they thus did blame CB radio operator and hams to be mean guys who ruined their TV reception.
But in reality, these guys often did nothibg wrong and did comply to officiall regulations.
The TV just was not being shielded properly and didn’t have filters, thanks to cost saving measures.
So yeah, new isn’t always better. It really depends on various factors.
Sometimes, old appliances have good analog characteristcs, simply.
Things like coils and filters must be physically big enough and have a good Q factor.
Small SMD parts in modern receivers/transceivers are a step backwards in terms of quality.
no longer needs?
what are you talking about? …my TV needs all of these… like everybody else…right?
Of course! Doesn’t EVERYONE watch YouTube on a good old CRT…?!? I have to admit though, the 480p Kodi skin was A B**CH to create.
I have 3 antenna so I can get the signals from 80, 200, and 300 degrees.
Broadcast HD is much MUCH better quality than the over compressed streaming garbage.
Does it still count if it’s hooked up to my server rack and served to the house/family smart TVs through Jellyfin?
I’m old enough to remember the tube tester at my drugstore. It fascinated me as a child.
In former East Germany, they had something similar. An egg tester.
It was a box with a strong incandescent lamp, installed in grocery stores.
The customers had to check their chicken eggs on their own, to make sure it’s fresh and not carrying an embryo or something.
It’s being mentioned here: https://musenblaetter.de/artikel.php?aid=2118
The worst TV gag I ever saw was a clear plastic overlay tinted blue yellow red in 3 horizontal bands to make your B/W TV into COLOR! That pattern fits the general colors of a western.
I’ve seen 2 vintage set-top tunable preamps for VHF, continuous variable tuning 2 to13 which covered FM and public VHF services. One tube.
Our single longtime UHF was moved to ch11 then we got low power the 3 other networks by UHF so shortened rabbit ears are still needed on a 4-bay UHF bowtie (high gain) to get everything but PBS.
All these comments and the “I don’t own a TV dude hasn’t shown up yet?”
Sigh, ok then.
“Hi, My name is Bob and I don’t own a TV…” (Technically untrue as I’m currently testing one I fixed.)
If there is one thing that the modern TV has killed, it is the concept of the set-top-box. Modern TV’s are so thing you can’t place anything on top of it anymore. Sure the boxes still exist, but good luck on putting them on top of your TV set.
That’s interesting. In my family, VCRs and satellite receivers had always been put below or at the side of the TV, not atop of it.
In the 90s, the CRT TV was on a black hi-fi shelf, for example.
I remember, though, that relatives had put their flower pots on top of TVs..
Back in the mid 50’s when we got a second channel you needed a set top box to receive it (ITV converter)
Broadcast television is still the main way to receive television in Europe. It amuses me to see Americans talk about “over the air” television (“it’s free! and legal!”) as if it’s some forgotten relic of history. Not everywhere in the world was captured by monopolistic cable television companies. Thank God.
+1
And let’s don’t forget all those clickbait YouTube videos about “secret” tips about how to receive free TV,
but then it turns out it’s really just a piece of metal in the RF jack of the TV.
So confusing! Also the strange term, OTA. It’s just normal terrestrial TV aka antenna TV.
I still have and use the large external antenna (albeit, sans rotor). Nothing on pay TV I want to see anyway. Not much on local except for the old rerun channels.
I think you omitted the shadow mask demagnetizer… thankfully, I never needed one, and with a bit of luck I never will.
Oh, I used to have to use a degaussing coil all the time on customer’s units. It was fun to play with, too 🤠
I recall having a stereo converter at one point, for when stereo sound was first introduced but most TVs were still mono.
That wasn’t the motor going “chunk, chunk” in low-end Cornell-Dubilier and Alliance rotators. Rather, that was the feedback mechanism, essentially a pulse counter. The motor was analog. It had 2 windings: one for clockwise rotation, the other for counterclockwise. Geared to the rotator’s output shaft was a cam that operated a switch. There was one switch pulse for every so-many degrees of antenna rotation. The control box had a knob that you turned to the desired antenna heading. Underlying it was a disk with an arrow that purported to show the actual heading. When you moved the knob to a different position from that of the arrow, the motor in the rotator would begin to operate in a direction to drive it toward that position and a light in the control box would illuminate, indicating that the motor was powered. In the control box was a solenoid that was operated by the pulse switch in the rotator. There was a clever arrangement of springs and an escapement such that when the rotator had turned by one increment, the solenoid pulsed and the arrow disk moved by one increment toward the position of the control knob. When the arrow disk again lined up with the knob, the control box would shut off power.
There was a mechanical stop in the rotator that would prevent it from turning past North in either direction, to avoid uncontrolled wrapping (and destruction) of the antenna’s feed line.
It was necessary to synchronize the control box with the rotator, either on first installation or if the antenna had windmilled. To do that, you’d turn the knob all the way to North in one direction (clockwise or counterclockwise, it didn’t matter which one you did first) and wait until the motor stopped and the light went out. If the solenoid pulses stopped but the light stayed on, that meant that the rotator had hit its mechanical stop and you needed to input additional pulses into the control box to synchronize the disk’s escapement (pulse counter) with the actual facts. To do this, there was a lever under the control box that allowed you to manually operate the solenoid’s plunger as many times as required to move the disk’s arrow to the knob’s position. You would then turn the control knob to North in the opposite direction and ensure that the rotator stopped normally, correcting it with the lever if it didn’t. Once the units were synchronized, they would usually stay that way for a while. There wasn’t a brake, as there is in higher-performance rotators, such as the Ham-M. Nor was there a direct readout of the actual antenna heading. It was crude, it was clunky, it got the job done. And it only needed 4 wires.
I remember when i worked at a pizza shop in the early 2010s., someone wanted to watch something on tv so they took a coax cable, taped it to one of the circular pizza dishes and were abke to recieve a watcheable signal by propping it up in the correct orientation. This was before i knew anything about electronics so i was blown away. Then i came back in the store and it was suddenly a perfect signal. They had now put the cable onto the metal shelving unit you see in all resaurants.
I still use rabbit ears.
Here in Seattle, the Kraken hockey team is broadcast on the local NBC affiliate’s secondary channel which is available OTA. I use the TV tuner instead of cable as I can keep multiple TVs in sync making it easer to move from room to room and still watch the game in real time. The cable box and streaming apps are never in sync and are hard to sync up.
Second, I live close enough to Lumen field such that when the Seahawks are playing at home and score, I hear the cannon shot from the stadium long before I see the play completed on cable broadcast. Using the rabbit ears allows me to watch the game in near real-time and the delay is at least reasonable. (I still hear the canon shot before the play, but it’s generally no more than a second or two whereas with cable its more than 20-30 seconds delay.)