Old aerial outlet sockets

[Colourstar]

I picked up a box of assorted surface mount aerial sockets this morning at the local junk market. I think they have a certain charm all of their own, so felt compelled to save them! Some good old brands here and all are nicely engineered. I wonder how many of these are still around, screwed to skirting boards and window sills and covered in layers of gloss paint?

Steve

[Colourstar]

And not forgetting the Arrell filter unit, unused and still bearing it's price ticket of 12/6!

[Dave Moll]

Originally Posted by Colourstar

...price ticket of 12/6!

62½p for our younger viewers.

[McMurdo]

the gold ones take me back to the little school in the mid 70s. When you finished watching TV you had to remember to plug a flylead back in to maintain continuity to the classroom next door.

[OscarFoxtrot]

And so many "made in England"

[Nuvistor]

I have fitted many of those in the early 60's.

[SteveCG]

.. Ah, yes, back in the days when such physical dimensions hardly caused an impedance mismatch !

[Panrock]

Are old television aerial plugs allowed? I wonder what the socket looked like that this one plugged into? Or indeed, what the correct name for this type of connector is...

Steve

[Heatercathodeshort]

Probably a lot like this one removed from the skirting board in the house of a customer. I later managed to get the receiver that was on the end of it.
John.

[chriswood1900]

John
That looks like really early one I must assume it dates from the early 50s, do you know anything about it or its history? Perhaps the set you got was a clue!
Chris

[Heatercathodeshort]

Pre war HMV 900 Chris. [Recovered early 1970's]

[Skywave]

Photo 1, bottom left: I have one of those attached to my workshop bench to feed VHF FM aerial signals to any VHF radio undergoing repair & testing on that bench.

Al.

[Graham G3ZVT]

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...1&d=1504951095

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...2&d=1504951095

My grandmother had a diplexer like this.
From it I learned that screwing in a brass slug, decreases the inductance of a coil.

Graham.
G3ZVT

[Heatercathodeshort]

Strange how I use all this old workshop equipment and never really think of it as creating any interest. I must be getting older every day..

Took these pictures of my workbench and part of my aerial distribution system this morning. The two pin outlet is a rare one me thinks. John.

[Herald1360]

I wonder why Arrell caled their diplexer a "Filter Unit"?

Come to think of it, when did "diplexer" enter the lexicon? Was it someone's trademarked term?

[MonochromeMarc]

Hi Steve,

What a grand lot of sockets you've saved. Well done that man.

Marc.

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi
I have to admit that 'surface mounted aerial sockets' conjured up a very different - and rather worrying - picture to me! I like the unusual FM one. The great thing about these is that any water coming down the coax stayed well away from the set. Not like now - a customer showed us a photo the other day of the liquid that was coming "from the screen" of her LCD TV!
Glyn

[mark_in_manc]

Originally Posted by Colourstar

And not forgetting the Arrell filter unit, unused and still bearing it's price ticket of 12/6!

Goodness, I had a job on that industrial estate. Galt's wooden toys were there, and a place which made inks, and a few others - nowadays it's mostly storage, an indoor play centre, a small housing estate and a few car repair places.

[ntscuser]

I was going to suggest we still had the original outlet from when this place was built (by the council) between 1967 and 1969 but then I remembered the faceplate was replaced at some stage when I complained about a noisy signal. (It made no difference to the signal quality either).

What's striking is that it contains only a single coax socket from a period when all TV sets had at least two aerial inputs, one for VHF and one for UHF. So in order to switch from one to the other one would either have had to purchase a splitter or else crawl behind the TV and manually relocate the flylead from one socket to the other. I don't imagine many people bothered. There was no provision either for FM radio or a second TV in another room.

That distribution system was abandoned in 2010 and a second one installed with a separate wall socket and again no provision for a second TV, FM radio, DAB or satellite despite their growing popularity. The new socket stands proud of the wall as there was no way of chasing it into the reinforced concrete wall.

[Brigham]

I remember it being perfectly normal to change the aerial when you 'turned over'.
We eventually got a combined Ch.5/Ch.8 aerial, which made things much easier.
You only swapped the aerial if you wanted Ch.10, after that.