"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:
"Pete C." wrote:
Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:
Hey guys!
We live in an area with little television reception. I've avoided paying
for a dish, as I don't watch all that much TV. We get a PBS station, along
with one of the Fox network stations. Good enough for us, as we get news and
some interesting scientific shows.
Ok, now my question. I have a splitter in a room that is not heated. As
weather turned colder, I started getting a lot of blue screen on the TV.
The colder it got, the worse the reception, until it got to the point where
the TV was off more than it was on. About a week ago, I lit the boiler
in the room where the splitter resides. Suddenly, great reception. When
the room cooled off, after turning off the boiler, it was back to blue
screen once again. Heated the splitter and got service back. When it
? cooled down, it was, once again, lost. Replaced the old splitter with a
? new one, which improved reception, but did not eliminate the problem.
? Finally hung a small light bulb near the splitter, which I figured would
? keep it warm. Sure enough, we now have great (albeit limited) reception
? once again.
?
? Anyone care to offer a reason for poor performance when a splitter cools off
? too much? I would suggest that it was in the 40 degree range, not
? freezing. Why would it cooling off make a difference? I fully expected
? that it wouldn't be temperature sensitive.
?
? Harold
Nothing to do with the splitter, it's the connections to the splitter,
what we termed "suck out" at the cable company when it happened on line
gear. What you have is "F" connectors which are little more than nuts
crimped onto a piece of coax with the copper coax center conductor
acting as the center pin for the connector. If that center conductor is
cut too short when things get cold and the metal contracts it will pull
back into the coax and out of the connection in the splitter or
whatever. The connections on the hard line coax on CATV line gear are a
little different, but the same effect can occur there with the center
conductor pulling out of the connection if it isn't cut long enough.
Actually, it was the opposite on hardline. The foam insulation
slowed the contraction of the inner conductor and caused the shield to
pull out of the connector. BTDT, and needed the propane torch to thaw
out hands.
Not in our experience in the frozen northeast. The hardline connectors
grip the AL shield/jacket quite well, and the span between poles always
has a slack loop to allow for contraction without pulling on the
connectors. The center conductor which just connects inside the line
device with a screw terminal lug is where some inexperienced techs would
clip the center conductor off just past the lug, leaving only 1/4" or so
before the conductor would pull free of the contact. Leaving a good 3/4"
past the lug prevented the problem. Of course on line gear the problem
is worse than on home gear since RF can bridge a bad connection, but the
60VAC line power for the amps can't.
Funny that you mentioned CATV. I have a pile of Agile Modulators
sitting here to convert to the old US FM band, and an agile processor.
I wish that I had ahd a few of these 25 years ago when I repaired
headends and designed interconnects between community loops for seperate
CATV systems.
I've got a couple modulators kicking around as well. Not much use any
more in these ATSC days though.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/270834480453 is a cheap 10 dB amp that would
likely help in a marginal area.
An amp located near the antenna, or there are some pretty good amplified
unit antennas available these days.