OT:TV Detector Vans

Yes as i said in my reply. However they were not strictly vans, more estate cars with blacked out windows really. You could not stand up in one.

Brian

I don't know about detector vans, but the BBC have sent me a letter every month, for years, promising to visit. They never do, or at least I don't think they do. A man did come around once, but he was shy. We chatted in my front garden, but he wouldn't reveal who he was. So I told him to go away, perhaps he was a TV detector man?

I suppose detector vans might be theoretically possible, in a lab, but in real life... And of course it is now perfectly legal to watch TV without a licence as long as it isn't live or iPlayer.

I see Tempest has already been mentioned.

Bear in mind the technology was developed before personal computers with CRT monitors so the task went from "Electronic something" to "Electronic something which is displaying a TV station in real time".

Now that CRTs are no longer generally used and there is usually at least one LCD screen in use in a household as a PC monitor the challenge must be even more difficult. Given that Tempest (IIRC) decided a long time ago that PCs with LCD screens were no longer considered a threat because of low levels of radiation.

Anyway not an issue here as we pay for our TV licence.

Cheers

Dave R

Hard to say. When my mum's house was empty (and had no TV) we went from polite letter, visit card with date on it threatening to return to threat of legal action ALL IN CAPITALS AND RED LETTERS inside a month.

Going online and giving them an explanation stopped any further bother.

It was much easier to do with the old analogue sets.

When I was a kid back in the 60s I once saw a Commer 3/4 ton van with a damn great steerable coil on the roof. I'm pretty sure that was a detector van, and you'd have been able to stand up in that.

In fact there's an article about them at

Sadly the pictures won't help Brian much.

Andy