ONE of the Post Office’s nine new television detector vans was foiled on Friday – by a Skegness dentist!
The van, which had been operating in Skegness and district all week, was carrying out a demonstration search for “TV pirates” — people using TV sets without licences.
Armed with the information, supplied by the Post Office of course, that the vans can detect the room in a house in which a television set is working and the channel it is on, he urged for the detector van to pull up outside a Skegness TV store where a set had been switched on.
The aerial on the roof was swung round and in a few minutes technician Ken Rushton, of Granville Street, Boston, had received on his equipment, oscillations from the set. He was able to pinpoint it and say that it was working on an ITV channel.
So far so good. but when the same set was switched to channel 1 — the B.B.C. — the van could detect nothing.
Mr. Rushton gazed even more deeply into a display screen, but without any luck. Even Skegness Post Office engineer Ken Taylor failed to detect even a minute-sized oscillation.
The fact that the Woodentops were on at the time had nothing to do with he failure, both men agreed. Blame was levelled —good naturedly — at a dentist whose electrical equipment was blocking out oscillations from the set.
But the detector does detect on B.B.C. and this was demonstrated on the outskirts of the town where the wavelengths were less cluttered.
As well as better detecting aerials and better equipment inside, other refinements of these new detector vans include a periscope, aligned to the aerial, to detect the “TV pirate” houses and for use at night, a spot light for the same purpose.
This particular detector is continuing its work in the Peterborough telephone area. It may return to Skegness in the near future. So pirates — beware ! That is, unless you have a dentist’s drill handy!
Photo: The detector van has found a television set working and Ken Taylor steps out to see whether it has a licence. The picture was taken in Lincoln Road during-a demonstration run on Friday.
Skegness Magazine 