radio silence

I was out this morning, and on the way home just as I turned into the farm lane the car radio stopped working.  I thought for a moment that the signal must have been interrupted, but looking down at the display saw that it had gone blank and dark, not a case of station unavailable, but a case of nothing whatsoever.  I tried hopefully turning the radio off and turning it on again, and flicking the preset button for a different channel, but nothing happened.

It has been iffy for years, occasionally retuning itself to Radio 1 for no reason, but this was the first time it had cut out entirely.  I felt a pang of dismay.  I have only just got the window fixed, and didn't want to have to pay yet another visit to the garage in Clacton, or rather two visits, one to drop the car off and one to get it back, or shell out another dollop of cash to have it repaired.

After lunch I hopefully asked the Systems Administrator to have a look at it at some point.  One of the beauties of the internet is that nowadays instruction manuals for practically everything are available if you hunt around, and the SA had soon found the complete Skoda Fabia wiring manual. The SA looked at the section on radios and said that according to the manual it was possible to get the radio out if necessary.  In the good old days it was easy.  The radio slotted into a hole in the dashboard and if it stopped working you could go and get another one at Halfords.  In any case, the SA added encouragingly, it was probably the fuse.

The Systems Administrator did have a look after tea, and returned to announce that the radio was now working and the problem must be a loose connection.  The SA had discovered this while banging the dashboard trying to get the fuse holder back into its slot, when the radio suddenly started, having retuned itself to Radio 1.  Until it stops working again it is impossible to say which connection is giving problems, though the SA assured me that there were not many of them.  It's a relief that I don't need a new radio.  I only hope the Skoda has not reached that point where bits begin to fail randomly on a regular basis.