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Retirement beckons It is poignant that the CAI reaches its 40th birthday this year, the same time as I become a pensioner. I joined the CAI payroll on 9 May 1994 when the CAI occupied serviced office space in Fulton House, Wembley. I had served 2 terms as a volunteer – one session as an ‘executive councillor’ in the late 80s and then as a director not long before applying for the role of ‘Inspector’. The job description was conceived in the 1990’s as a result of training committee talks that highlighted a need to review member applications on a more formal level and look at the applicant’s ability to work to codes of practice. Accompanying this was the need to develop training beyond the CAI SMATV Distance Learning Course and accommodate installers working in a more basic direct-to-home environment. From 1994 to 2018 - 24 years from ‘Inspector’ to ‘Technical Executive’ and finally ‘Senior Executive’ - has been a pathway paved with good intentions. Some have been laudable, others implausible and some downright, damn good ideas. A raft of training was definitely a good idea. And so it began. On 9 May 1994, I sat down at my dining room table with a Silvine note pad, a pencil (there would be a need to rub things out) and a telephone. My wife’s electronic typewriter had already been pressed into action... Channel 5 launches, satellite TVappears and sodoes a job I had ended a 17 year TV aerial installer business to join the payroll of the CAI when BSB’s ‘Squarial’ monumentally failed to capture the UK’s TV imagination. I had fitted 3 before time was called. The idea of 5 extra channels via a square panel on the wall was magnificently trumped by Rupert Murdoch claiming he would give us 50 channels via a dish no bigger than a dinner plate. It turned out he ate pretty big dinners – because some of the last jobs I ever installed were Amstrad dishes that required a tripod bracket to hold them still on a wall. Just before all this Channel 5 came along and suffered the indignation of having to advertise to the nation that it must provide a means to block its signal if it interfered with the nation’s video recorders. Never in the history of broadcasting did a channel have to stop itself arriving in the home! However, we gained massive ground as far as broadcaster recognition was concerned. I was immediately catapulted from my original job description as an inspector into a full-blown representative and ‘front-man’ for the CAI. At least 3 TV appearances resulted from the profile that being involved with C5 brought. The platform of local and occasional national radio began to designate my travel path around the UK. C5 spent £11m on call centres that steered viewers towards the CAI if aerial upgrading was required. This was major mileage for a trade association. We began to move on rapidly from the 350 membership count that existed on the day I started. The satellite years begin There can be no doubt that despite all the scepticism that surrounded Rupert Murdoch’s historic claims, the dawn of ‘direct-to-the-home’ multi-channel viewing via a satellite dish was a game-changer. With SES-ASTRA launching and operating the ‘birds’ that Sky TV were renting transponder space from, a promotion machine to convince the UK TV viewer to watch satellite 31 CAI Feedback Spring 2018