[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by cbenham

Is it possible that:
1. There could have been VHF translaters in use where the set was located? [not likely, I suppose]

2. The set's tuner came with UHF 'strips' installed in place of two unused VHF channels? Was that still being done in 1963? Wasn't it just in 1961 that the 'All-Channel Receiver Act' was passed by Congress?

Knowing how close the set was to the two UHF transmitters would
help answer the question too.

The translator theory makes sense but, like yourself, I don't think there were any UHF-to-VHF television translators near the TV in question.

I'm not sure whether or if Philco used UHF strips to convert their VHF-only TVs to receive UHF stations. This system was used exclusively by Zenith in the 1950s-'60s to allow its VHF-only sets to receive the then-new UHF stations; it wouldn't surprise me if they had a patent on it as well. If there were any generic after-market UHF conversion kits using strips to replace unused VHF strips in the tuner, I never saw them advertised anywhere.

The most VHF TV stations any city can have is seven, which would leave five unused strips; but most cities except New York and Los Angeles have far fewer stations, so most folks had sets with several unused channels--in the Cleveland area, only having channels 3, 5 and 8, for example, this would leave nine unused positions that could be replaced by UHF strips, not that Cleveland would ever have that many UHF channels. The area didn't get its first UHF station, PBS [then known as NET] affiliate WVIZ channel 25, until 1965; the first commercial UHF station was WUAB channel 43 in suburban Lorain, which went on the air in 1968 as an independent and is now the northeastern Ohio affiliate of the MyTV network. Channel 61 followed later the same year, followed by WBNX-channel 55 in 1985; 61 is now a Univision affiliate and 55 is the local affiliate of The CW network, after starts as independent stations, although 61 (now known as WCLQ-TV) was an affiliate of a short-lived over-the-air pay-TV network in the early eighties and also carried HSN home-shopping programming (as WQHS) from the mid-eighties until 1990 or so, when HSN went exclusively to cable. WQHS dropped HSN for Univision some time in the '90s.

The all-channel reception law went into effect on April 30, 1964; all new TVs manufactured and sold in the US were required to have both VHF and UHF tuners after that date. VHF-only receivers made before 1964 could be converted by means of a UHF-to-VHF converter box (the first of which, IIRC, was the Blonder-Tongue BTX-99 using a 6AF4 UHF oscillator and 6BZ6 IF amp) ahead of the TV's own tuner.

I did a search on Google for Revere, Massachusetts and found that the city is five miles from downtown Boston. I don't know where the Boston TV transmitters were located. I seriously doubt that the transmitters were actually in Revere; they may well have been in a city or semi-rural area of high elevation 20-30 miles from the downtown Boston area, much as the TV transmitters serving my area near Cleveland are located in a southwestern suburb called Parma, 35 miles or so from where I live. (Channel 3, the NBC affiliate for northeastern Ohio, may as well be 100 miles away since it doesn't even reach here and is unwatchable without cable or satellite, though 5, 8 and the eight or so local UHF stations, one of which, channel 19, is the CBS affiliate for this area, come in on an antenna just fine.) Some cities such as Chicago and New York actually have the transmitters for their major TV and FM stations located in the downtown area of the city itself, which, IMO, seems to me like it would be a setup for a heck of an interference problem between stations whose antennas were on the same tower, not to mention the interference from pager transmitters, cellular towers, etc. I really cannot imagine how four or more stations with antennas on the same tower (as in New York, Chicago, Detroit and possibly other very large cities) can operate at full power without tearing up each others' signals. The TV and radio stations serving the Cleveland area, on the other hand, are located in a suburb (actually, a couple of suburbs) some 15 miles from downtown; the towers are spread out so that they cannot possibly interfere with each other.

Pete Dexnis: I didn't know that the Q&A columns in electronics magazines such as Electronics Illustrated may have been (and probably were) professionally written, with the letters from readers being edited extensively or even made up by the column's conductor. This makes sense, however, because the whole business about a VHF-only TV set receiving UHF stations on rabbit ears (not using a UHF converter ahead of the set's VHF tuner) sounds incredible; in fact, given the manner in which VHF-only TV sets operate (receiving only channels 2 through 13), this sort of thing should be all but impossible, unless the set were located extremely close to the two UHF stations in question and was being overloaded to the point of saturation or worse--which, given the TV's location in suburban Boston, is not likely.

Very strong RF signals can cause TV sets and other electronic devices to behave in unexpected and downright bizarre ways. I once heard of someone who lived so close to a powerful local AM radio station that the person was, believe it or not, somehow hearing that station on his electric stove; there have also been reports of people hearing strong radio signals through their teeth, by means of braces or fillings acting as detectors, rectifying the strong signal. This only works, however, if the person is extremely close to the offending station's tower, say a few hundred yards or less. There was an episode of the '70s comedy series The Partridge Family in which Laurie (played by actress Susan Dey) was hearing a local radio station in her head for the longest time, until it was discovered by her dentist that the braces he had put on her teeth were picking up the signal from that station. . . . Oh well, that's one way to have your local radio station with you 24/7; the problem is you can't shut it off, and if the station is programmed in a format you don't care for, it can be downright annoying.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tom Kneitel made up that particular letter (about the person getting his area's two local UHF TV stations on a VHF-only TV) just to be funny, but then again that was the nature of his column, which was titled Uncle Tom's Corner and appeared in Electronics Illustrated magazine from the early sixties until the magazine folded some time in the seventies. Kneitel had a great sense of humor, but I would think at least twice before taking his material seriously.

I do remember a writer named Herb Friedman, whose articles appeared in several electronics magazines of the '60s-'70s. He was an amateur radio operator as well (W2ZLF), but I don't recall ever seeing a Q&A column written by him in any of the major hobby magazines of that period.