Oh, I Remember That Smell.

On September 17th pagers belonging to Hezbollah members in Lebanon suddenly exploded. On September 18th radios belonging to Hezbollah members in Lebanon suddenly. Creating a lot of excitement about supply chains for arcane electronics.

So, obviously, on September 18th I accidentally smashed the remote control for the Digital decoder box on the TV in my kitchen. Plunging me into the world of supply chains for arcane electronics.

https://twitterwithbraincells.blogspot.com/2024/09/ive-certainly-got-type-of-luck.html

What actually happened is that I dropped the remote control on the floor. Smashing parts of the plastic case along with most of the plastic fixtures within the case. Including a one really critical piece of plastic. The remote is powered by two AAA batteries with a spring loaded terminal at the negative end. It was the roughly 5x5mm square of plastic holding that spring loaded terminal in place that snapped off. Rendering two electronic devices which are a lot more complicated than a tiny bit of plastic unusable.

Obviously I was able to get the decoder box working again almost immediately. By taking the circuit board out of the remote control, taping the two batteries together and then wiring that battery pack to the circuit board. Allowing me to turn the box on and off and, occasionally, allowing me to change channel. With careful planning and preparation.

All with a contraption that really did look like it should be strapped to a bomb in a movie.

Luckily I managed to find and keep hold of that tiny square of plastic. Eventually I was able to get hold of some Polystyrene Cement. This actually works by chemically melting the surface of Polystyrene based plastics. So if you use it to melt two pieces of plastic and press them then, when it dries, it rearranges the molecules fitting them together to make a single piece of, admittedly brittle, plastic. On that very technical level it's not actually glue.

With the spring loaded terminal held in place by the tiny square of plastic again I was able to put the remote control back together again. Using copious amounts of electrical tape.

Polystyrene Cement is actually what you use to build those Airfix type plastic model kits. As a child it was a bit of a tradition that a relative would give me one of those kits for Christmas. I would then use that gap between Christmas and New Years learning to assemble and paint whatever that kit was. Which I now realise is just a really good way of keeping kids quiet in that gap between Christmas and New Years.

However those skills finally came in use. As I found myself, essentially, building a 1:1 scale model of a remote control.

While I was almost ridiculously proud of that little repair, the electrical tape even matched the colour of the plastic. I knew that it wasn't going to last for long. So I still had to get a new decoder box.

The only affordable one I could find, without visiting an antiques fair, wasn't actually a box. So much as a card which plugs straight into the SCART socket on the back the TV. Where the box sat on top of the TV. I don't know if any of you have ever seen a CRT TV, or a SCART socket for that matter, however the difference between the front and the back is a distance of about half a metre.

So this reopened the saga of the Digital TV aerial. A story which pretty much sums up my life.

My Paternal Grandmother was Welsh and very much spoke Welsh as her first language. She didn't even start learning English as a second language until she moved to London as a young woman. I remember she once had surgery under General Anaesthetic. Which resulted in her forgetting how to speak English for the best part of two days.

She was very active in, essentially, the London Welsh immigrant community. Who would all meet up regularly in order to talk about Welsh things in Welsh.

As her mobility and the membership of that community declined she really started to miss the opportunity to speak and be spoken to in her native language. Without getting into the specifics of the regulation of the UK TV terrestrial market. There is a Welsh language channel called; "S4C." In Wales this is broadcast in place of the terrestrial Channel 4. Despite it actually being operated by the BBC. Outside of Wales it is available on some Cable and Satellite packages.

So my Father thought it would be a bright idea to use her money to sign my Grandmother up to a two year contract to the Virgin Media Cable TV. So she could watch S4C. However he didn't think to check to see whether S4C was actually available on Virgin Media. It wasn't.

So while he was getting my Grandmother to pay for Virgin Media my Father then decided to use more of her money to pay someone over the market rate to install a Freesat dish and decoder box. Which, fortunately, comes without a contract and does carry S4C.

He then decided to use my Grandmother's money to pay the same installer over the odds to install a Freesat dish and Standard Definition (SD) decoder box at his house. So a decoder box which was incapable of decoding High Definition (HD) channels. So all Freesat channels, basically. At the same time my Father got the same installer to install a Freeview Digital TV aerial.

I use the term; "installer" loosely. This was clearly just a guy with his own ladder, drill and a vague map to a High Street electronics store. The bracket he used to attach the aerial to the chimney snapped after about two weeks. It is now held in place by one screw and where it rests on the guttering. Luckily it is still pointing towards the TV Transmitter so still works. However if a helicopter, particularly the police one, gets between the Transmitter and the aerial its electronics jams the signal.

There is then a single, very long, coaxial cable running from the rooftop aerial to the TV. Strictly speaking there's one, very long, coaxial cable running from the aerial to a splitter which is located outside. It isn't located in a junction box, it isn't even a splitter where plugs screw onto the terminal. If you are a Fox kit then pulling the cables out of that splitter is, apparently, the most fun game! If it's even a bit breezy then the wires fall out of the splitter and the TV signal cuts out.

From that splitter very long coaxial cables run directly to the TVs. Without even a suggestion of socket nor junction box.

Despite being absurdly long the coaxial cable running into the kitchen still wasn't quite long enough to comfortably reach the decoder box on top of the TV. It certainly wasn't going to be long enough to reach the decoder card at the back of the TV.

This left me facing the possibility of having to replace the entire cable. Which you can almost measure in Kilometres. Luckily though the decluttering did reveal a bit coaxial cable long enough and the right connectors. With a little bit of help from electrical tape.

Of course this saga was made available to the Crown. Just before the Crown decided that my Father was capable of having Power of Attorney over my Grandmother.