USA's Night Flight

I was in 6th grade when my town, Rock Valley, Iowa, finally got cable TV. I still remember coming home from school and finding a strange box with a dial sitting on top of the TV.

These were all the channels we had until that day.

It might look like we had 14 channels, but you never got that many. I think the most the TV antenna attached to our roof could bring in was six. But on that Friday afternoon our channel count leapt from six to 21. That was pretty impressive.

Of those 21 channels, HBO had me the most excited. I can remember the opening video that preceded the feature presentation better than most of the films I watched. I loved that model city the camera pans through and over.

I bet a lot of people don't remember that in the beginning HBO was only on air nine hours a day. From midnight to 3 p.m. all you could see was a blue background with the movie schedule crawling up the screen. It was a big deal when HBO started using a 24-hour schedule on the weekends a few months later.

MTV launched the same year we got cable (1981), but Rock Valley's cable company never offered it. Sure, HBO would sometimes fill airtime between movies with music videos, but that wasn't much good for a music crazy kid like me.

Instead, we had the USA Network. And that wasn't all bad. You didn't get music video 24-7, but you could watch the 30-minute program Radio 1990 every weekday at 5 p.m.

And on weekends you could expose yourself to other cultures.

But best of all, you could catch a ride with Night Flight. A few days ago Paste magazine published a list of the 80 Best TV Shows of the 80s, and Night Flight was at number 66:

I don't know how many of my boring, small town weekends were filled with the zaniness that was Night Flight. But I do know I was one of those impressionable teens; Night Flight was proof to me that the world was much bigger than self-righteous Sioux county.

Few, if any, of my friends watched Night Flight, and I didn't meet many people who had saw it when I attended college in South Dakota and Nebraska. So, Night Flight just drifted into a distant adolescent memory.

Every so offen I'd come across something from the 80s that would remind me of Night Flight - like seeing a video for "Beds are Burning" by Midnight Oil (Night Flight once aired a complete Midnight Oil concert). Then I'd Google around to see if I could find anything Night Flight-related. A couple of years ago I happened upon the iOffer website. A seller was offering a 35 DVD set of Night Flight episodes (115 hours) for $49.00. He, I assumed it was a guy, had recorded those 115 hours on videotapes, and these DVDs were the transfers from VHS. At less than $1.50 per disc, the price didn't seem unreasonable, and the seller had good feedback. Anymore, I don't buy anything online without checking feedback first- do you? So I took a chance.

I'm glad I did! Now I can relive my well spent youth while I'm out in the garage. Here's my low-buck stereo setup.

That's Daphne's old 13-inch tube TV that I convinced her not to throw away. Hooked up to it is a $3.99 Apex DVD player, and a $14.99 Harmon/Kardon computer speaker system - both from Goodwill. The speakers connect to the DVD player with a headphone jack/ RCA cord, and the cable TV connects to the DVD player through a used FM modulator.

It sounds really good, an it's surprising how much bass the Harmon/Kardon woofer puts out. Here's what I see when I roll out from under my car.

When I first started recording programs on a VCR, I tried to pause the recordings during commercials to make the tape seem more professional. Now I enjoy the old commercials as much as the old features. Check out the dude's hairdo and the grocery gal's shoulder pads in this news spot (you might be able to still get in on channel 8's "Week of Caring" - you're only 30 years tardy).

VHS quality recordings look pretty poor on modern televisions, but they look pretty good on tube TVs. So I think it's fitting that I play these recordings in the garage.

It's too bad that it got so cold this week. I think I'll wear a stocking cap while I watch that Midnight Oil concert tonight.