january 1983.
It seems I was already preparing to buy a zx spectrum, seeing two antenna cables coming out of the right canal on the photos for the month - the flat one for the radio (still the same aitchesar from 1977) and the stiff black coaxial, which means we already bought a television set. Not that we were too eager to watch the programme, but because we'll need it to serve as monitor for the computer, whenever we manage to procure it.
I didn't have a separate antenna for the radio, rather simply connected it in parallel with the coaxial. The coaxial was still a novelty, it didn't connect straight to the antenna, had to buy an adapter for it. The length of the dipole was, of course, wrong for the ultrashort wave, but actually it was very close to half of the best, so it was quite close to a first harmonic. My guesstimate was that I incurred a loss of maybe 20%, give what you may, further fucking around with the hifi would be waste of money.
The television set was small, white, monochrome portable piece of plastic. Portable in the sense that its case featured a part which could be used as a handle, and it really could be carried in one hand, but it worked on 220 volts and the ridiculous thin stick of an antenna didn't catch anything. Maybe in Belgrade or Novi, where you could see the transmitter with bare eye, here no way.
The photos for this month are desperately bad, I was experimenting with solarization and using the document film straight in the camera, which means orthochromatic emulsion, low sensitivity. Interesting and unusable, perhaps for certain usages, if I could think of any that I may need for something. Here, the one where the cables are seen, badly solarized, neither here nor there. Not necessarily every experiment is a success. This one was, in the sense that I learned how the materiel behaves.
To the left of the macrame is the phone cable (this was before RJ-11 was invented), those two to the right. Makrames were done by Oma, she always has to have some such passtime.
Mentions: Novi Sad, Oma, ZX Spectrum, in serbian
17-IV-2026 - 16-VII-2026