English to Russian Tech/Engineering Electronics / Elect Eng Television - in the text of an American novel about the 1950s

His newfangled antenna had been mounted to the ceiling of the service department. Twin-lead trailed down the wall to the bench, and from there to a turret tuner of a TV chassis. The antenna formed a circle of thin aluminium tubing, within which was a network of even finer tubes, going in various directions like spokes of a wheel. From the many tubes a meshed network of leads had been gathered and clamped into a single cable which led into a control box of terminals and lugs and from there to the twin-lead.

It’s not worth a fuck, Roger said to himself.

His idea was to provide an ***infinitely variable antenna*** controlled by the channel selector. As the selector was rotated, sections of the antenna were cut off and others were cut in. The idea was that ghosts could be eliminated, weak signals could be reinforced, static could be reduced, and so forth. In practice, however, the settings made no change in the quality of the picture.

With the soldering iron he changed some of the leads around, returned a few of the channel strips, and then gave up.

The hell with it, he decided. He turned off the chassis. The only thing that would affect the picture quality would be a raising of the antenna, and that would require a power source, such as a quarter horse power electric motor. And that would price the system right out of the market.

So that’s that, he said to himself.