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Rookards RantsI'm told by the management that you dear listener demand that I do a write up for you about my show, life and things in general. But lets face it you're never going to read this stuff are you.. so instead heres the first of a series of blogs for you. And much good may it do you.
Rookards Rant Number 16
I went mad the other day, wondering around the High Street I chanced upon a store flogging off cheap memory sticks. I’ll have one of those I thought shelling out the loot to the happy shop keeper and rushing back home to try the little toy out. Oh dear caught again. Yes it works a treat on my computer loaded with XP pro, but try it on my other computer loaded with win 98 series two and not a sign of life. And why not, basic incompatibility that’s why! Now I have to do a deal with a mate with an older version that comes with a driver for the beast. Trust me next time to go looking for bargains.
Same with the card reader I’ve also obtained. Again works alright, but will only deliver a frame sized 7 inches by 4 inches, whilst the older programme that takes a little longer can from the same file give me 18 inches by whatever. Computer stores must love me. Oh goodie they cry on spying me entering their doors – It’s that Rookard – lets dump the rubbish onto him.
But I’m not over keen on throwing stuff like this away as you never know when old computer of electronic kit might come in useful. For example how do you spend your average lazy Sunday afternoon? Is it feet up, television on, just verging out? Well welcome to the clan, only in my case it’s not viewing the crud being pumped out by BBC or ITV. Well not unless it’s motor racing. No for me it’s the delights of German television via my £5 satellite tuner. The very same type used by a certain grubby gutter press proprietor in the days before digital telly to charge through the nose to view his many channels of repeats you’ve already seen on the terrestrial channels.
But because you’ve being conned to go over to any bit of new equipment with the word ‘Digital’ writ large on it, there’s a pile of old style analogue tuners looking or a home just laying around, and a visit to a recent Radio Ham Junk sale found me a nice tuner for all of £5. This added to a dish found in a skip and mounted on an old washing pole does me nicely as a number two receiving system.
So what does this man of Essex get for free? Well first off, those very few English language stations still broadcasting in clear and without any nasty encoding. This includes the American based CNN - ideal for coverage of American school shootings and other disasters and Eurosport, which has done something I never thought possible - turned me into a fan of it’s day long coverage of the round France cycle race, for can there be no better commentator then David Duffield a man of the old school who can even maintain your interest when his beloved men on bikes are lost in the fog.
But for sheer delight, are those German Channels. The great thing to remember is that knowledge of the German Language is no barrier as a picture is worth a thousand words etc. So for any first timers venturing onto these channels, here’s the Rookard Hun Television Guide.
So let’s start with WDR that broadcasting from Cologne. They have a wonderful doggy show that tries to find homes for the collection of badly behaved hounds they drag into their studio… mind you I’ve fallen in love with the shows raven hared beauty, Claudia. Another show of note on a Sunday Lunchtime is from RTL who present a couple of hours looking at other stations commercials, some of them wildly funny.
But for me, the best time of the week, is at 4 pm or 3pm during summer time on a Sunday afternoon, when mug of tea in paw, I tune down to SWR in Stuttgart, where for a half an hour I’m in heaven with a show they call, Romantic Railways. Lots and lots of lovely locos strutting their stuff. Yes say what you like, the Hun can’t be all that bad if they like trains and things railway as well. But for real sadness, I can do no more then recommend Frankfurt’s HR television station where often overnight rather then show a boring old test card, the railway mad engineers screen four hour long videos of railway journeys or tram rides as seen from the drivers point of view.. At the last count I have eight four hour video cassettes of these broadcasts. Anybody want to see them!
But now something even better has entered my life. TV via broadband where on one site I have discovered a streaming television feed from something called Bann TV (Bann is the German word for Railways by the way) This means a twenty four hour channel devoted to things railways. Now why can’t sky to the same thing. Would beat the hell out of those bloody god channels.
Finally in this rant, a lament for a sight of yesteryear, for does anyone still remember the dreaded post office television detector van. Normally a blue transit van it would appear once a year in your area all festooned with aerials. Inside for all to see would be a crew all watching a rack full of flashing lights, plus radar screens and a couple of television monitors. The idea being we were told was to detect your TV set in operation in your living room. The very thought they could be cruising down your road would then panic us into rushing down the local post office for that bit of vital paper, lest the gentlemen in their detector van cop’s you for your £1,000 quid fine for failing to fund the BBC to make all those wonderful programmes for you etc.etc.
For years the very sight of that van, left cunningly outside a local sun post office would around my part of town drive the residents into a state of shear blind panic and great was the business done by the old lady in the post office come sweet shop in flogging off new Television licences, Ah happy days.
Of course it was all a great big con. I mean did they know we were not in procession of one of their nice bits of paper. Well not from any cold nights sitting huddled in their antenna festooned van with only a thermos of coffee and a jam sandwich for company I can tell you. Remember these were the days before satellite, and only two channels with programmes only stating late afternoon. No back then the truth was that their bank of shinny equipment covered in flashing coloured lights and glowing oscilloscope screens couldn’t pick up a signal from a flatulent Elephant at ten yards, let alone your 21 inch pride and joy in the living room.
The story put around by the post office back then was that their van and its equipment was detecting the RF or Radio Frequency signal produced by the transformer coil located on the back of your television tube. I have to tell you that this was a story that for years caused endless hours of merriment for years among electronic engineers, because whilst it’s true you can detect that RF signal from the back of your set, if your living in a street with every other family gathered around their TV’s, in order to zero in on your unlicensed you would need three separate detector vans to co-ordinate their search. That’s how illegal radio pirate transmitters are located, and the same goes for anything else giving out an RF signal. No the sad truth was that back then as now if your name is on their computers, it maters not if you gave up the box, or are even six foot under, your going to get every spring, a demand and threat of a fine. It was never you understood a polite request.
Alas those days are now gone, the task of collecting the TV licence fee has been privatised, and you can no longer pay over the counter of your post office. And our money grabbing Government is now more cunning. They assume we all have a television set and thus we are all guilty and have to prove our innocence. Rather like our legal system really. For forget having your name on their special computers in Bristol. No I suspect everyone off the electoral list gets targeted.
But I do wonder if in some dusty warehouse or in the corner of some remote museum rests an old blue transit van complete with all its equipment and with the words Post Office Television Detector Department write large on its mud streaked flanks. Be nice to see an example again and in my minds eye relive that traditional moment during my youth, when my parents and everybody else down our road would start running around like headless chickens at the traditional cry of, “theirs a bloody detector van down the bottom of our road” were heard, and the panic caused by the local population rushing into the sub post office on Kings Road the next day.
Somehow the paying by direct debit does not seem the same does it.
this box. Article by Dennis Rookard, 30 May 2007 |
 
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