Reception in Kilkee

zilog_jones

I'm trying to figure out why the TV in my grandparents' place in Kilkee is so bad. There seems to be a new enough aerial on the roof - not colour-coded or anything so I assume it's just some generic wideband yoke - and from what I can guess it's pointed somewhat at the Kilkee relay. There's some sort of amplifier inside (it's a bungalow so only about 2-3 metres away from the aerial). RTE1 is pretty good, but RTE2 and TG4 are progressively worse - TG4 so bad that it frequently makes their crappy Philips combi TV go to a blue screen.

I guess TV3 is not carried on the relay, as all I can seem to get is a very ghosty b/w reception from Maghera - somehow I seem to get a better reception of that and TG4 from Mullaghanish! Wow. Also, a lot of other people seem to have two UHF aerials, so I guess they're getting TV3 from elsewhere. But where? Maghera? I couldn't seem to pick up TG4 from Maghera at all.

Anyway, why would the reception from the relay be so bad? Could it be naff co-ax that's just crapping out above about 750MHz? It looks like the cheapo brown stuff and it's got age-old paint on it. I could replace it but I've never done stuff directly with aerials before - how does one connect the co-ax to the aerial? There also seems to be some small black box dangling from it - is that just a junction box or something?

Or could the aerial just need moving?

Ulsterman 1690

Hard to know

There also seems to be some small black box dangling from it - is that just a junction box or something?

Sounds like its the amplifier and

There's some sort of amplifier inside

the thing inside you think is an amplifier is actually a power unit for the amplifier

The fact that its "dangling" sounds bad

zilog_jones

I never knew how those masthead amps work. Do they get power through the co-ax then? There's no other cables going to it. And yeah the dangling did look like it was a builder job as opposed to someone who knows what they're doing...

lucernarian

Replace whatever looks dodgy. E.g. the amplifier and mabye the cable aswell.

steveon

The local transmitter in Kilkee does not carry TV3, in certain parts of Kilkee a Colour king and a good amplifier can sometimes get all channels from Cork however this is rare.

What you will need is two UHF Aerials

ONE GREEN Tipped UHF
ONE Red Tipped UHF
UHF Combiner, and PSU

From the top of my head televes model no 5352 is what you need...

hope that helps,
Steve

L1011

zilog_jones wrote:

I never knew how those masthead amps work. Do they get power through the co-ax then? There's no other cables going to it. And yeah the dangling did look like it was a builder job as opposed to someone who knows what they're doing...

The power is sent up the coax by the PSU in the house, same as a satellite LNB takes its power from the box up the coax.