Rigger's Diary: unusual aerial location

Yesterday I called at a terraced house that had recently been 'done up' by a
spec builder and sold to a young couple. The standard of the 'doing up' was
unusually high, and the house had a very nice kitchen and aerial sockets in
all rooms. There was even a satellite socket in the living room, but as yet
no dish connected to it. Terrestrial TV reception 'wasn't too good', so the
builder, who seemed to be a nice genuine bloke, had asked me to sort it out.
On my arrival the living room telly was duly switched on and reception was
shown to be very poor indeed. The young lady said that it was a better
picture upstairs, although connecting the flylead to the wall socket didn't
seem to make much difference. On the living room TV set there was no
ghosting to speak of but the picture was very snowy indeed and it looked as
if the mains wasn't connected to the distribution amplifier (which I
surmised existed). At that point the young lady interrupted my chain of
thought. "The aerial thing's in the cellar," she said. "Is that alright?"
Because of what I'd been thinking I assumed she meant the distribution
amplifer, so I said "Oh yes, that isn't a problem as long as it isn't damp
down there." Oddly, she seemed disappointed. I went down to (as I thought)
switch the amplifier on. In the cellar there was indeed a Taylor eight-way
amplifier, neatly fixed to the wall, and already switched on. It was
connected to a perfectly installed Blake log-periodic aerial, which was
fixed to a length of mast hanging down from the ceiling. The ceiling of the
cellar I mean. I suppose the aerial would be about a metre below the outside
ground level. Unusually, the lady came down into the cellar. I stood there
regarding the aerial, blinking a little and lost in wonder. "We don't really
like it there," she said. "I think somebody's going to poke their eye out.
Could you put it somewhere else -- in the loft or somewhere?"

"Yes," I said. "I think it would be a good idea. A great idea in fact. It
might even improve your reception."

"Ohh, that would be great!" she said. So it was done, and yes, it did
improve reception. "Ohh," she squealed later, "We can even get teletext!"

Bill


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