Amazing! I tuned in the French first channel! In black and white... Soon I picked up several foreign stations that broadcast over the country. Originally the set would only work on 819 lines and had a single channel (Lille 8A) VHF tuner. Belgian and British transmissions were on different frequencies and on 819 and 405 lines respectively.
Fitting a rotary VHF tuner and some considerable bodging over time made the set the only multistandard receiver in the district.
Now I needed to attack the UHF if I wanted to see the presenters on the French second channel. At the time there was nothing better than two-valve EC86/EC88 tuners, with a large variable capacitor by way of finding a possible station. They had the sensitivity of a crystal set. You had to install very high aerials and use short cables. Because of this I had to requisition the attic, which from then on became a veritable research laboratory where dozens of television sets accumulated...
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One day I was in my favourite TV repairer's when he gave me a modern set. A Philips TF2315A, large 19 inch diagonal screen with less rounded corners than the others, but best of all, a transistorised tuner.
When I'd replaced the valves in the line output stage (PY88, PL136, DY86) the set worked brilliantly. It had three EF184 pentodes in the IF strip followed by a butch video stage EL183.
On VHF the Belgian French-language programme from Brussels was easily received on 625 lines. The UHF band was richer in stations than I'd thought. BBC2, ITV (the English independent channel) and two Dutch channels were quietly waiting.
However, the pictures were unstable and in negative, and the sound was nasal. After some research I learned that they were on other systems (I and BG). It was necessary to reverse a diode somewhere in the vision path and build an FM demodulator for the sound. After reversing all the diodes in the set I managed to see something correct on the screen. From then on I received a good dozen channels, all easy to spot as at that time there were very few programmes. For three-quarters of the time, monoscopes scanned the famous test cards particular to each transmitter.

One summer's day when I tuned in to the Band I channel for the Belgian Flemish programme, I was astonished to see a test card I didn't recognise. The picture was unclear, but from time to time of very good quality: it was Czech Television! It only lasted five minutes, after which I tripped over the soldering iron cable and fell down the attic stairs in my hurry to tell everyone the news. By the time everyone was wedged into the doorway - no more Czechoslovakia! Nothing but snow and beeps from radio amateurs. I looked very clever! But all we had to do was wait, and before our dazed eyes this time Polish television appeared on the same frequency, then Russian, Swedish, Norwegian... Impossible to follow a film, except with a good eyewash, but it was a total surprise. By the following week, the whole of Europe had paraded across my screen! Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian channels... in fact the Band I frequencies, which are relatively low (40-60MHz), may be propagated sporadically depending on unpredictable seasonal ionospheric paths. Of course, no one believed me when I told them I'd pulled in no fewer than 300 stations up to 2000km away. It was supposed to be impossible, especially since the world is round, and yet... But you, dear reader, must think it is quite banal. On the contrary, there were no satellites to relay the capricious signals. To satisfy the doubters, nothing like good photographs of test cards and idents. Irrefutable.
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I was equally interested in the very particular propagation of UHF, much less unpredictable. That is fond of high atmospheric pressure and dense fog, which form a sort of waveguide, or a giant magnifying glass between transmitter and receiver, if the sun has been pushed aside.
The attenuation of the signal is proportional to the square of the frequency and the length of the cable. The TV receiver was already at the highest point in the house. The idea was to put the tuner in the aerial dipole box and to send down less vulnerable frequencies (32-39MHz [ie the IF]). Unfortunately, varicap diode tuners did not exist. Brilliant at bodging, I put in place a system of pulleys, cords, counterweights and bicycle brakes in order to turn the inaccessible variable capacitor without leaving my seat. Stop laughing, because the results were sensational: the Finnish second programme 2000 km away. Magnificent.

The first colour TV set I got was also valved. Fifty kilos of electronics, with 819/625 lines (I won't describe the convergence circuitry) and transistorised PAL/SECAM decoders. Fabulous results with the several UHF channels that were being converted to colour. Anyhow, that telly contributed a lot to the heating of the attic in winter.
It really was a very nice era, when everything was complicated and expensive. Now it's easy... and the dish is free. I'll leave you to look at the test card photos and appreciate the quality.
François Frappé, Dunkirk.
francois.f@bbox.fr
Thanks to Alan Pemberton for the translation assistance.

You are invited to take a pleasant trip into the past, to the time when thermionic valves were going strong, not only in the steam radios sets well known to the nostalgic, but also in TV sets.
The small screen was in its infancy and so was I. It all started in 1967, in Dunkirk, France, when my elder brother gave me an old TV set, destined to be cannibalised for spare parts. Rather than dismantle it and convert it into a hi-fi amplifier, I preferred to give it the chance to live.
Despite being a complete novice - and you don't learn to mend tellies at school - I nevertheless managed to get the spot scanning the screen again.

​DX TV Reception

of television transmitter stations during the 1960s and '70s

at Dunkirk, France.

by François Frappé