She says ...

Press, 21 May 1981, Page 21

She says ...

Most cars have a radio these daj's. and that, naturally, means a radio aerial. A prime target for vandals, these — hence the justifiable popularity of “hide-away" aerials that vanish into the bodywork without leaving a protruding stump for the light-witted to seize and wrench off.

Such aerials have one big disadvantage: you carefully put them down when you park the car, and forget to put them up again when you drive off, so that you find yourself in the traffic stream with a radio that doesn’t work. The expensive answer is one of those poweroperated aerials, which go up when you turn the radio on, and hide themselves away .when you turn it off again. ;

Even they have their drawbacks. I was amused the other day to see a fellow driving along with his power aerial plunging furiously up and down, probably because of a switching fault. Others I know who have them report that dust gets into the aerial “core” fairly regularly, and a

thorough hour-long annual cleaning is essential. One friend who had such an aerial mounted on the rear wing of his car had a yahoo walk past when the car was stopped for traffic lights, casually snap off the aerial, and vanish into the crowd. It was a very expensive of vandalism. Aerials built into windscreens and boot-lids were all the thing among car-makers a couple of years ago: as far as I know they worked well, so I can’t imagine why little now seems to be heard of them. It seems to me to be the simplest way of overcoming the problem. Barbara Petre