TELEVISION ANTENNA

— The decimeter waveband (...) they put a re-transmitter in at our hotel. And then we had televisions that could receive the decimeter waveband, receive Kolomna. Antennas were shared back then, but they didn't have the decimeter waveband on the master antenna. They didn't bother putting them in at first, but later they did. It's pretty close by. We made them figuring that each of us would have a decimeter antenna (...) The dimensions were published in a magazine, Radio, and this is where it all started. The diagrams for the decimeter waves. We used those figures to make this antenna here. But, you know, the vibrators — the resonators — are everything. They were made from forks so that the reception would be better. We then split them, kind of, or made them like paintbrushes. From copper. And so we tried to make them. A fork is sort of like a brush — I mean, it's split, like the bristles on a paintbrush. So, we took the dimensions from there. In my opinion it all worked out very well. So we started to do it all pretty quickly, connect them to the master antenna as soon as we had connected it from here. Then we connected mixers to the collective antennas and of course the decimeter antenna received signals better through amplifiers. And then everyone got rid of their amplifiers. The effect was noticeable from the very beginning. Everyone particularly wanted to watch the programs from Petersburg (...) My mother had the forks in her cupboard (...) Ha, ha, ha!... I didn't buy them. She bought them when everything was collapsing. There wasn't much else in the shops to buy anyway. So we bought them. We ate with them, but they weren't even very good forks for eating. They did, however, go well with that antenna.