On 10 May 2005 15:29:41 -0700, wrote:

Seeing the other thread on FM and aerials has reminded me about
something I've been meaning to find out about.

I would like to have a proper FM aerial installed on the roof. The
thing is that there are two receivers that I would like to connect it
to. One is in the lounge at the front of the house and the other is in
the dining room at the back. One option would be to have the coax
coming down from the aerial, eirther at the front or the back of the
house, bring it into the house and then split it somehow. I'd rather
avoid this option to minimise internal disruption. I was wondering
instead how feasible it would be to have two separate wires coming from
the aerial - one going down to the front of the house and the other to
the back. Would this need some fancy splitter or something or could
the two coax leads simply be wired into the same aerial. (I guess
there's also the option of having two separate aerials but that seems a
bit over the top.)

If you simply wire two cables in to the aerial you'll lose a lot of
signal. Depending on the lengths of the cable, if you unplug one
receiver you might lose reception on the other (an open-circuit cable
of a certain length wired across another might act as a
short-circuit).

You can buy a splitter to fit near the aerial, to feed two cables, but
you obviously have to make sure it's quite waterproof (unless you live
somewhere with no rain).

You will lose a bit of signal with a splitter, but probably a lot less
than you would by simply wiring the two cables together (and it would
be tricky physically to get two cables into the connection block in
the aerial!).

--
Frank Erskine
Sunderland