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Receiving Sets (Detection)

Volume 495: debated on Wednesday 30 January 1952

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70.

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a brief statement of the scientific method employed by the vans used by the Post Office for detecting wireless receiving sets.

I am advised that many sound and all television receivers have circuit elements which radiate electro-magnetic waves when the receivers are in use. These radiations can be detected and located by direction-finding methods.Following is a statement giving details of the working principles of the device which has been developed for detecting television receivers.

The detection equipment utilises the induction magnetic field set up by the line scanning coils of the television receiver; this field contains strong harmonics of the fundamental line scanning frequency of 10.125 kc/s and these can be picked up by a sensitive receiver at distances of up to 100 ft. or more in many cases.
Three horizontal loop aerials are employed; these are tuned to the second harmonic (20.25 kc/s) of the line frequency and are mounted on the roof of the detector van in an "L" formation. The outputs of the loops can be switched in turn to the input of the radio receiver and its audio output heard on a loudspeaker or indicated on an audio level meter. By noting the relative levels of the signals from the three loop aerials the operator can obtain a clear indication of whether the television receiver is in front of or behind, or to right or left, of the detection van. For example, when the van passes in front of a house on the same side of the road, containing a working television receiver, the indications obtained from the fore and aft loop aerials are equal, and that from the off-side loop aerial is weaker than that from the other two.
The strength of the induction magnetic field varies inversely as the square of the distance and this fact enables receivers even in adjacent houses to be separately detected. The brick walls of ordinary houses have little or no effect on the induction magnetic field at the relatively low frequency (20.25 kc/s) used.