Cut Cable. What to do?

[miguel622]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here so bear with me please.

My aunt has a winegard antenna and pre-amp installed at her cabin. She wanted to split the connection to run another cable to the upstairs tv. We were too hasty about it and I went ahead and cut the cable coming down from the antenna to the power supply for the pre-amp. It was not until after we cut the cable and couldn't get any reception that I discovered the power supply for the pre-amp was a power supply and not a distribution amplifier. Now we have a cut cable and I can only assume the power is not able to be transferred from the power supply through our splitter and to the pre-amp.

Would it be okay if we crimp new ends onto the cut cable and install a cable-to-cable connector like this?

Is it possible the preamp was damaged at all by cutting the line?
If none of this makes sense let me know. Thanks for your help.

[winegard]

Good morning miguel622 -

Would it be okay if we crimp new ends onto the cut cable and install a cable-to-cable connector like this?

Yes, that should be okay. This should not have damaged the pre-amp.

[miguel622]

Thanks for the quick reply.

One more question. From now on should we split the cable coming off the power supply? It's a PS-7070 power supply and I don't know which pre-amp.
Also would splitting the cable cause an large loss in the signal and could a distribution amplifier help this?

[winegard]

If I'm understanding you correctly you should not need to split the cable coming off the power supply.

[miguel622]

Well she would like to run another cable up to the bedroom for the tv in there. Since the power supply needs to send 18VAC to the preamp I would like to leave that alone and not disrupt the power.

The power supply has a cable coming off of it into the downstairs tv and I would like to put a splitter after the output on the power supply and run that upstairs. Am I making any sense?

[miguel622]

I posted a small drawing of what I would like to do if that might help clear some confusion.

[KNP 2516]

From a installers perspective.

Anything cut into line between the antenna and the power injector - with the exception of the ground block, which should be mounted 3 to 4 feet above ground, depending on area of location - hence snow or rain is a no no.

The purpose of the pre amplifier is to amplify the signal coming from the antenna and going to the television.

The amplified line cannot be spliced, due to the fact that it would allow interference to enter the line.

The purpose of the shielding in the cable is to transmit - with as little interference as possible - the signal from the antenna to the television.

Between the pre amp and the power injector there is a current, anywhere between 19 and 24 volts.

Television reception is in micro volts.

If you connect a television between the power injector and the pre amp, you will have no useable signal and will probably burn out something in the front end of the receiver of the television or over load it at the least.

At the same time, it will short out the connection between the pre amp and the injector and will not allow the pre amp to work. Hence no signal at either end.

Once the signal is processed inside of the injector and converted to a useable signal, you can install a splitter - after the power injector - power supply - which will work with more than one television.

One little thing to remember is that RG 6 coax is cheap!

Quad Shield wire is the prefered wire for DTV installations.

So if the wire you cut is plain old RG 6 - you are not out much to begin with.

Throw the old wire away and buy new wire.

A 500 foot box of Signal RG 6 Quad Shield Wire at Lowes is only $70 a box and you can buy 10 crimp on connectors for about $5 and a crimper tool for about $50 and a stripper for about $5 and make all the antenna wire you wish.

A 250 roll of wire is about $50 - with the same cost for tools.

A 100 foot roll of wire with factory ends is about $47

The wire it's self is the cheapest part of the equation.

Go out and buy what you figure you need + some for future installations, as long as you keep it clean and dry it will last a very long time. Wire does not wear out. It's failure is usually caused by moisture getting between the jacket and the wire causing it to corrode and fail.

The other day I bought a 500 foot box for a 100 foot installation - due to the fact that I can always use it somewhere else. No use trying to save $10 only to find out that you bought 10 feet less than what you needed.

[KNP 2516]

Not all wire is the same

There is good RG 6 and not so good RG 6

The best wire for the money that you can buy is Belden 1829 AC

Wire is rated at loss per 100 feet at X amount of frequency.

DTV is mainly UHF which is high frequency.

Loss is expressed in DB

3 DB = a gain or loss of 1/2 of the useable signal.

Belden 1829 AC wire is rated at a loss of about 4.1 db at 500 Mhz.

500 Mhz = UHF channel 19

What that means is that if you had the same signal for two different channels one being channel 6 - VHF 82 - 88 Mhz and the second being channel 19, your wire would loose half of the signal at the antenna between the antenna and the television if the wire was 100 feet long.

At channel 60 - UHf 746 - 752 - it would have lost twice that amount - 5.1 db

Add in a splitter with another loss rate of about 3.7 db for a 2 way splitter and pretty soon you have lost most if not all of the useable signal. That is with the good wire.

A cheap wire would be a loss rate of even more.

Now you can see the purpose of using good wire and the reason why not to try to splice wires going from the antenna to the power injector.