Aerial installer - Wexford town

chickey

Hi

Was wondering if anyone could recommend a good aerial installer/servicer in or around Wexford town. Have a second hand house with three aerials on roof - think one of them is an English aerial but am not getting any English stations. Have tried two different signal boosters without any joy - no sort of reception at all. The previous owners gave the impression that they were receiving English stations.

Suspect something may be wrong on the roof - which I won't be able to get at personnally. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Pal

Myles Redmond in Gorey did a good job for me.

Antenna

I presume the boosters you tried were indoors.
The Aerial for the "English" channels would surely have a masthead amplifier. Are you using a powersupply for this at the other end of the aerial cable in the house? This must be there to receive anything, don't confuse such a powersupply with a booster, as some people do.

BTW If your TV displays UHF channel numbers the channels to tune to for the "English" stations are (from Presely in Wales):

37 C5
40 BBC2
43 ITV Wales
46 BBC1
50 S4C

chickey

Thanks for the info. The boosters I used are indeed indoors. There is what I think is a mast-head amplifier on aerial on roof, a black box about 4x4 inches. Don't think I have a power supply for this which could be the problem. Lot of different cables goin on some linking to other rooms - cables rather than aerial sockets so a bit messy to figure out.

There is a mysterious lenght of white electical type flex, running under the floor and surfacing at far side of room, which appears to have had the plug and whatever was connected on other side taken off it - possible power supply for aerial?

Where could I get a power supply for the aerial? I take it this plugs in in sitting room etc and aerial is plugged in to it. How would I distinguish this from a signal booster? Are these power supplies pricey? might give this option a go before calling a professional.

Any advice welcome
Thanks

Mike 1972

think I have a power supply for this which could be the problem

most likely.

Most TV shop's (or failing that Maplin) will have power supplies however you need to know whether you need a 12, 15, 18 or 24 volt model (12 being the most common)

chickey

Power supply appears to have done the trick. Picked one up in Maplins - its 12v. Connected up last night - and heh preto was looking at five new stations. The pictures on them are coming in a bit grainey but they are watchable. Might be possible maybe to improve quality with some tinkering though I'm on a bit of a slope and near ESB pylons/cables - assume this can't help.

Seem to have two aerial leads one for RTE, vhf, and one for other stations, uhf. Connected up to the "uhf" lead unfortunately the power supply use "f" connectors which wre supplied but had to remove existing aerial connector from lead and dont know if new connection is as well fitting at the moment. Tried putting new power supplied aerial and seperate rte aerial through one tv splitter - in doing so I seem to have interferred slightly with quality of rte.

Am considering maybe trying power supply with "rte" aerial to see what type of reception this would give across all channnels out of curiosity - would this be likely to work/ be safe. Am a bit confused about the two seperate aerials which both seem to work without power supply - any helpful suggestions on how I could make further improvements most welcome and thanks to mike1972 for the hlp so far!;)

Antenna

Originally posted by chickey
Seem to have two aerial leads one for RTE, vhf, and one for other stations, uhf. Connected up to the "uhf" lead unfortunately the power supply use "f" connectors which wre supplied but had to remove existing aerial connector from lead and dont know if new connection is as well fitting at the moment. Tried putting new power supplied aerial and seperate rte aerial through one tv splitter - in doing so I seem to have interferred slightly with quality of rte.

You are introducing unnecessary signal loss using a splitter to combine the VHF and UHF cables. Buy a VHF/UHF diplexer and use that instead. There are two types - outdoor (go on on aerial pole the same as a masthead amplifier) or indoor (much smaller with normal plugs) - Any well stocked TV dealer should have them.

Am considering maybe trying power supply with "rte" aerial to see what type of reception this would give across all channnels out of curiosity - would this be likely to work/ be safe. Am a bit confused about the two seperate aerials which both seem to work without power supply ....

Obviously this goes direct to VHF aerial (for RTE1/NET2) WITHOUT amplifier (otherwise you would have extremely poor or no reception of RTE without a powersupply. If an amplifier is unpowered practically no signal (of the band it amplifies) will pass through it.

The other cable has all your UHF signals. The amplifier only amplifies the UK stations and TV3 (Ch 26) and TG4 (Ch 23) must be combined after the amplifier (from what you are saying).

If both VHF and UHF are being received, usually VHF and UHF are combined by a masthead amplifier or masthead diplexer meaning only one downlead in needed. In VHF/UHF areas the amplifier may just passively combine VHF and amplify UHF, or amplify both VHF and UHF if needs be. Your seperate VHF and UHF downleads is probably a vestige from the days that TVs had seperate VHF and UHF connectors at the back