By Edison Ypi
Memorie.al / From the end of the 70s, amid frantic efforts with pipes, nets, wires, pans, mechanisms, to watch any television other than the RTSH propaganda dump, it was found out that through an antenna narrow and short that could be placed even inside the house, in the UHF band the second Yugoslav channel could be seen, and during the Summer, in addition to Rai Due, also some private ones. But the televisions installed in Durrës only allowed receiving VHF frequencies, but not UHF. So a UHF – VHF converter was needed. The miracles of television and electronics rushed you to the Russian “fai da te/do it yourself” magazines, left in the National Library from the 60s, from which they got sketches and instructions for such converters.
The converter, or “cans”, as the Albanian people baptized it with their proverbial wisdom, right after the TV miracle came to light, was a metal box the size of a pack of “Partizan” Gjirokastre cigarettes. There was a coaxial cable that connected to the TV, and another coaxial cable that connected to the antenna. It was powered by a wire that received current from outside the “cans”, usually from an army battery, but also from inside the television or from a small radricator with a 220/12 volt transformer, and a diode.
Inside, “cans” had;
A transistor. From least favorite to best, the transistor could be; AF 106, AF 139, AF 239, BF 272. Some resistors and some small capacitors. A variable capacitor consisting of two sheets of sheet metal that, approaching and moving away, enabled the exchange of overseas stations that in a short time would radically change the material and spiritual daily life of Albanians. God knows where transistors came from. Eager to see, no one asked.
Capacitors and resistors were no problem. They took them from disused circles and gave them to me. But I also made them myself from pieces of stamped circles according to a simple procedure with scissors for cutting and glue for gluing.
Later, in order to give the “cans” a more dignified appearance, I replaced the tin of the box with blue or green antimony plates, which a friend from “Poligrafik” brought to me cut, according to the successful application of the principle Leninist: “I have work to do”.
The 2-transistor “jug” that received slightly better than the 1-transistor “jug” was the consecutive placement of two 1-transistor jugs.
When I had to make 10 or more cans, I organized a kind of “batch production” by cutting the sheets in advance and laying them out on the floor like playing cards where Hasia saw Fate. An acquaintance of mine who was going out on a boat brought me a handful of transistors from Italy. They had apologized to a TV service in Italy.
I made all the “Jugs” for the islanders. Hoping that there might be a transistor inside it for “cans”, someone brought me an electrical circuit, taken from a meteorological balloon that the wind had brought from who knows where, to bring it down in Albania!
We islanders were very amused by the nationwide thirst for “cans”. The director, the deputy director, the boss, the secretary, the clerk, the spy, the officer, the commander, the commissar, the reprobate, the academic, all of them who were deaf to the danger of the revisionist bourgeois culture, all of them were feverishly looking for “cans”.
Improvement after improvement, success after success, “from one victory to another”, the plates, the wires, the tin, the soldering tin, the cables, the clamps, the feeder inside the “cans”, all of the “I have to work” brand, from the end of In the 80s, “cans” did not differ at all from an industrial converter.
The signals of the channels were not stable, they came and went, but you were never left without seeing anything, because this channel went away, but others came.
Life was good with cans, especially at night. News, movies, shows, interviews, etc. were seen.
“You Edison,” an islander said to me one day, “you with your “jugs” with 1 and 2, even with 3 transistors, you are the only one who doesn’t leave the “jug” in canned fish, but built it with antimony plates, you who experimented with transistors ‘BFR 90’ and ‘BFR 91’, to watch satellite television, you who removed the rust from the lives of hundreds of islanders, friends, relatives, you are the most qualified ” tin maker” in Albania. But since today the craft of “boatman” is practiced only in Albania, you are the best “boatman” in the world.
Thank you, I told the islander, but please don’t eat my hack, he gives me full credit. While today the craft is not recognized, not only in the world, but nowhere in the Universe, I believe that I am the most qualified craftsman that the Milky Way has.
Cans, this “Trojan Horse” that the international bourgeoisie inserted as a wedge between the “crowded ranks around the Party”, did a lot of work.
Films, spectacles, the Polish Pope, Solidarnost, Perestroika, the shooting of the Ceausescu couple, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Meeting of Malta, the maestro comments of Demetrio Volcic and Jash Gavronki, and many others, Albanians saw thanks to “cans “.
For ten years in a row, from the definitive poisoning of the brain by propagandistic donkeys that are replaced by bicycles and other filth played on screens and stages by those who today are spinning like farts in their panties in buildings and turbines, Albanians were protected by a metal box with some reliquial inside. /Memorie.al
