Model 57-1 timing issue

[Snakeoil]

I remember a TV we had as a kid. It had rabbit ears and the station would disappear every so often. I'd have to get up and give the TV a whack on top and the station would come back. That TV got hit so many times in the same place that the cabinet's plastic was cracked in the grill area and a bit caved in. But the whack would do the trick every time.

Youngsters not knowing what snow is made me chuckle. How about a coat hanger for an antenna when you broke off one of the rabbit years? Or better yet, a wad of aluminum foil on the rabbit year to improved reception.

Remember the fine tuning on the channel selector. After you clicked to the right channel, then you had to turn a dial behind the channel selector to improve the reception of the channel. All that was missing from that mental image I have is somebody saying, "Come in, Rangoon, over."

Hell, today, if I'm watching a show and need to hit the head, I bring the show up on my phone and watch it while I'm on the pot.

Geesh, technology is turning us into a bunch of girly-men. Well, maybe not Brett. He's still out there in the cold and muck hammerin' on some frontend loader or wrestling with goats. I'll bet he wished he could do that on his phone.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

Young folks have never played the game, "Better or Worse"

I'll explain it for our younger forum members.
One person sat in front of the TV (after waiting fo the tubes to warm up) and the other person stood outside near the TV antenna. The person near the antenna would slowly rotate the antenna while yelling, "Better or Worse"? and the person monitoring the TV would respond until the best signal was achieved.

Sometimes when the antenna was in a high location (like the roof) or far away, there would be extra people in between the antenna rotator person and the monitor person to relay the “Better or Worse” inquiries and responses.

When the best signal was obtained (and sometimes this was a compromise between transmitters in different locations) the antenna would be locked down at that heading. Then the fine tuning would begin, for the VHF and UHF channels.

 

[462]

The younger members here may not even know what "snow" on a TV is!!!

Or test patterns. Or the "Star Spangled Banner" being played just before the station went off the air till next morning.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

Or that there were two antenna inputs, one for the VHF channels and one for the UHF channels. Sometimes you mounted a separate UHF antenna on the same mast as the VHF antenna but aimed them separately.

And you didn’t just “turn on” a tube set. You had to wait for it to warm up. Even after the electronics were solid state (no vacuum tubes) the picture tube was still a big CRT, [Cathode Ray Tube].

I also remember taking the tubes out of a TV and taking them to a Tube Tester at a retail store (usually K-mart, a local drug store or sometimes a hardware store). And you didn’t throw away weak tubes that still sort of worked. You saved those as spares in case the new tube died catastrophically, which they sometimes did.

 

[358156 hp]

Color TV wasn't a big deal when the one station you reliably got was usually pretty snowy anyway. The younger members here may not even know what "snow" on a TV is!!!

Or horizontal hold.

 

[Snakeoil]

Young folks have never played the game, "Better or Worse"

I'll explain it for our younger forum members.
One person sat in front of the TV (after waiting fo the tubes to warm up) and the other person stood outside near the TV antenna. The person near the antenna would slowly rotate the antenna while yelling, "Better or Worse"? and the person monitoring the TV would respond until the best signal was achieved.

Sometimes when the antenna was in a high location (like the roof) or far away, there would be extra people in between the antenna rotator person and the monitor person to relay the “Better or Worse” inquiries and responses.

When the best signal was obtained (and sometimes this was a compromise between transmitters in different locations) the antenna would be locked down at that heading. Then the fine tuning would begin, for the VHF and UHF channels.

And don't forget the guy on the antenna becoming a part of the antenna. Sometimes, when you touched the antenna, your body drew a bit more signal and the picture got great. If you let go, it went to pot again. I can still here my Dad saying "Perfect, now stay there." with me holding onto the antenna.

Ahhh, the good old days. Don't miss'em.

 

[Ian]

I didn't even have a television before I bought my first house in 1999. Even then I didn't much care for it, only got three channels with a garage-sale roof mounted antenna, and after moving back to SW Texas I didn't have one either until I met my ADD, technology-addicted wife. We put our first one in the house in 2008 and I honestly don't know how many flat screens and internet-TV wonderstick thingies we have now, maybe six? The only screen I pay much attention to is my laptop.

What I DO know is I have eight bookcases absolutely packed with books and boxes of them on the floor, plus about six feet of technical books on a shelf in the shop and about the same in the gun room. I have read probably 90% of those books cover to cover, many more than once.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

What I DO know is I have eight bookcases absolutely packed with books and boxes of them on the floor, plus about six feet of technical books on a shelf in the shop and about the same in the gun room. I have read probably 90% of those books cover to cover, many more than once.

/\ And you are unquestionably better off reading books. /\

Television has been described as the nation's wasteland and I don't think that's too far off.
For the most part, it is bread and circus. Entertainment for the masses, provided at the lowest common denominator. (and often even below that).

I will say that the internet has changed what “TV" is and the television set has become a large video monitor with sound. I watch very, very little network TV and I am missing NOTHING.

Back in the days when there was nothing other than analog, "over the air" television broadcasting; "television" meant programing from one of the 3 major networks, PBS or some local UHF channel. Things have changed a lot.

 

[fiver]

Young folks have never played the game, "Better or Worse"

i laughed straight out loud...... man.

 

[Bret4207]

Geesh, technology is turning us into a bunch of girly-men. Well, maybe not Brett. He's still out there in the cold and muck hammerin' on some frontend loader or wrestling with goats. I'll bet he wished he could do that on his phone.

Heh! Yeah, well they do make a "Farming Simulator" game thing that idiots play on their phone. I suppose it's better than the fantasy slash and kill games where you can have intimate relations with other characters, or so I'm told! Either way, I can't see how anyone can find that entertaining, but then I'm kind of an odd duck in the first place.

 

[Bret4207]

Or horizontal hold.

Oh yeah! Flip....flip....flip....flip.... Or trying to adjust the vertical so that Uncle Walters face didn't go sideways every 5 seconds. The weird part was that even when you knew it was going to happen or was actively happening, we'd sit there are watch "Tom and Jerry" because it was still better than no TV at all, or something like that! Seemed like the only time the TV came in crystal clear with no other problems was when the only thing on was something you had zero interest in. You wanted to watch "The Wild, Wild West" but the screen was snow and the sound would fade out. But if it was "You Can Quote Me", an incredibly boring local news interview show out of Burlington Vt, it came in perfect! You couldn't win.

We had 2 sets of double stack antennas after about 1975, one for each station we sort of reliably got, both mounted as high as possible on the peak of our restaurants roof. Rotors were an exotic idea you only saw in the Sears catalog, no one we knew actually owned one. So when the wind kicked up and the antennas shifted around, we would have the series of people trying to re-tune the antennas. Dad would be on the roof with a pipe wrench turning the antenna and Mom would be watching the TV, while my 2 brothers and sister would be the relay team feeding info between her and Dad. The 2 stations. Burlington, Vt and Plattsburgh, NY, were both to the northeast about 100 air miles away and not that far apart, but you had to have the antenna just right or you'd lose either! Whatta pain! But boy, it made it so my grandmother could watch "Hollywood Squares" in the evening and that was worth it.

 

[Petrol & Powder]

............Rotors were an exotic idea you only saw in the Sears catalog, no one we knew actually owned one. .................

Oh, so true. I saw more antenna rotors on beam antennas for Ham radio guys than I did for TV users!

When I became old enough for the job, I became the "antenna rotor".
Sort of like being "the dishwasher".

And there were antenna tricks. If you had a neighbor that had a better location to receive a station (like his house was on higher ground) you could aim your antenna at his and often pick up an strong signal reflected off of his antenna.
And if you had a long run from the antenna to the set, high quality, foam core, Twin Lead (300-ohm lead) had less loss than the cheap stuff. It could make the difference between a snowy picture and a good picture. Coax was even better, if you could afford the coax and the balun for each end. (TV's didn't have the 75 ohm coax connectors in those days)

 

[CZ93X62]

Analog TV wasn't real tough where I grew up--about 60 miles east Los Angeles. All of the TV stations broadcast from roughly the same area of L.A., so one antenna setting did the trick for all of them. IIRC, one network station (ABC) and one of the independents (KCOP-13) took a touch of fine tuning to come in well. There was an auxiliary 'butterfy' antenna needed for the UHF channels, and PBS had some really good programming before the Bolsheviks ran things.

Now, we have 700 channels and there STILL isn't a whole lot worth watching. Go figure.

 

[hornetguy]

First liar doesn't stand a chance... we didn't even have electricity. We had to watch TV by candle light...

 

[Petrol & Powder]

And to get the candles you had to walk in the snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways.

 

[CZ93X62]

And to get the candles you had to walk in the snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways.

Yessir, that's what life in the 1960s was like. The youth of today has no clue whatsoever. Ice Age living was no day at the beach.

 

[Ian]

Yes, but normal people could afford Cold and S&W revolvers that were dimensionally perfect. Or so I'm told.

So was everything really better, or worse in the "Good Ol' Days"?

 

[fiver]

everything weighed more back then.


you guys had candles?
sheez we had to walk through 3' of snow across town to use the leftover candle light from the rich guys window.

 

[462]

So was everything really better, or worse in the "Good Ol' Days"?

You had to have lived them to know they were better. I'll argue that it all started falling apart after a certain November event in Dallas.

 

[Ian]

The world has been falling apart since the Paleozoic era.