FM Antenna

At the risk of seeming a shill for Magnum Dynalab, you should get their MD

It doesn't just boost the signal. It cleans it up. Remember to put ferrite chokes on the AC power cords of all your FM equipment (and possibly the audio cables), so the good work done by the MD 205 won't be undone by direct RF entry.

Don't run coax. Run conduit. PEX tubing or whatever is code acceptable in your area. That way you can replace cables, add cables, run fiber, run rotator cable, etc. If conduit is not an option, run every cable type you suspect you might need in the future. Two runs of RG-6/u at the minimum.

You probably don't need any gain if you're in a strong signal area. A passive splitter will work just fine. 4 way is more common than 3 way, which is really a pair of two way splitters in series.

If your coax run is more than about 25ft, I suggest an antenna mounted amplifier. They come in many varieties, but mostly for OTA TV reception. Many of these have an FM notch filter to ELIMINATE FM overload of the TV receiver if there is an FM transmitter in close proximity. Careful what you buy. Most such amps have 20-30dB gain which can do more damage (due to overload) than good. You may want to try your antenna with no amplifier first. If the signals are weak, then add gain.

RG-59/u is usually garbage. Good enough for indoor patch cable use, but not much else. I strongly suggest RG-6/u with waterproof compression (not crimp) connectors. You'll also need a compression tool. I have one of these that works with most connectors: You'll also need a coax stripper: Note that there are different types of RG-6/u which require slightly different compression connectors. A connector made for RG-59/u will not work with RG-6/u.

Of course. Coax is cheap. Your time is not.

Crimp type connectors are awful. They usually fall apart, make lousy ground connections, and in extreme cases, leak RF. Use compression connectors. Compression connectors are permanent.

To keep water out of the outdoor connectors, wrap them with a layer of teflon plumbers tape, and then cover that with Scotch 66 electrical tape. The teflon will cold flow, making a water proof connection. The electrical tape just holds it in place. Removal is trivial and the connector looks like new.

I live in central California, where there's little lightning. Few residential installations are grounded. However, if you live in lightning country, grounding the mast and any associated devices is probably a good idea.

I just love audiophile hardware. This one is only $440. Ouch.

Chuckle: "signal amplification variable from -10dB thru +30dB (30 times to gain) to bring weak stations to full quieting* and tame strong, harsh, local signals"

I would love to see the shape factor of their filter that's 400Khz wide (so that it passes HDRadio signals), yet is -70dB down on the adjacent channel, which is 0 KHz away. (US FM stations are on 200KHz channel spacing will allocations on alternating 400KHz slots).

Not really, but it seems like it would help get rid of overload from excessively strong nearby TV signals. Just an FM band pass filter would probably do most of the heavy lifting.

That does no good with todays plastic case, unshielded receivers. Some work better with no antenna attached. The FCC Part 15 conducted radiation filter found the AC power cable usually does a great job of blocking such RF pickup.

I guess it depends on how you define "clean up" -- but it definitely audibly improves some signals. And this improvement varies with the setting of the preselector control.

Obviously -- your mileage may vary. I wouldn't recommend the product if it didn't work for me.

Not on the metal-cabineted products I own.

I've never heard of such a filter. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I've never heard of it.

Without a line choke on the tuner, the MD 205 simply doesn't work properly.

Another "Dilbert" moment - failure to communicate between sales and engineering departments. (I'm being kind here in this assessment.) Sincerely,

They do it with oxygen-free copper. :-)

Jonesy

(snip)

Yesterday, the electrician replaced my old run of RG-59 with RG-6 cable. T he box is labeled: CB1B06DSCR0-05. I didn't realize that my other existing run is already RG-6. The cable is marked with "E83032 F6SSVV". Can all t ypes of RG-6 cable use the same compression connectors? If not, is it suff icient to determine if the outside diameter of the cable is the same? Bob Simon

That would be Perfect Vision RG-6/u made for DirecTV. 60% braid over aluminum foil. Black. I couldn't find any specs on the stuff, but I probably have some at home.

The full name and number is: MEDIAONE E83032 F6SSVV-CRD CATV It's made by Comscope for Media One CATV. Quad shielded and very similar to the Perfect Vision cable. As before, no specs, so I can determine connector compatibility.

Both cables are fairly generic and a generic RG-6/u compression connector will certainly fit. There are some exotic RG-6/u "type" of cables, which will cause fit problems, but you're unlikely to run into those. You'll find compression connectors retail at Home Depot or online. Just make sure you get those for RG-6/u and *NOT* for RG-59/u.

There are major differences in the size and construction of the connectors, which causes problems getting them to fit in the compression tools. The tool I previously mentioned seems to work with everything I've blundered across. There are better and cheaper tools, but you run into the risk of buying a connector and not having a suitable tool. There's no easy way to do this without the compression tool, so make sure that they match.

No. The critical dimension is the diameter of the insulating dielectric surrounding the center conductor.

Quad shield requires a larger outer diameter than standard RG/6. The center is the same size, but the extra layer of braid & the second foil makes for a larger OD. I've seen people peel back the two outer shield layers to use regular connectors, or fold all four back on themselves without the jacket. Sloppy, can pull out, or flexing will break the shield.

I still can't find any specs on that cable but did find a sample. It's double shielded RG-6/u and not quad shielded.

This one is quad shielded. Therefore, these are not identical coax cables and will need different connector types.

Sorry about the muddle.

That's correct. Note that I also screwed up in decoding the coax cable part numbers. One is double shielded, the other is quad shielded.

Another way to kludge it is to buy all quad shielded connectors. When dealing with the smaller diameter double shielded cable, the ground connection is made with the inner shield pair. Just slip a piece of shrink tube over the outer jacket and compress. It actually works nicely (if the shrink tube is at least 1" long), looks nice, and has survived a unofficial pull test. Since I obtained two Kroy "Tube Marker" shrink tube printers, I've been doing this fairly often.

The electrician had to work another job this morning so the contractor brou ght over his connectors and tools. (The box of cable was already here.) T he new 65' run from the antenna in the attic allows my receiver to play eve n marginal stations without pressing the mono button so I'm happy to report that this was a complete success. No need for an amp at the antenna.

Since I've never pressed on a compression connector before, I'd like to kno w if I'm doing this optimally. First, I adjusted the stripper to leave all the braided shield on the inside cut while going almost all the way to the core for the outside cut. Then I folded the braid back over the jacket wh ile leaving the foil covering the insulator and pushed on the connector unt il the foam was even with the inside of the connector. Finally, I inserted the core and connector into the handle of the tool, made sure it was align ed, and squeezed.

For the quad-shield RG-6, I left only the inside foil on the foam and folde d the rest over the jacket. It was a lot harder to push the connector on t he cable so I used a twisting motion.

Very good. Congrats.

Perhaps reading the instructions or watching a video might be useful. Ignore anything that looks like a crimp type connector. Your description sounds correct, but I can't tell if you're using the correct connector, or doing something else that's odd. Make sure you use the proper stripper device to get the dimensions correct:

I skimmed some of the videos and found a few discrepencies.

- You do NOT want to peel the foil off the dielectric.

- You do want to wrap the wire braid back over the outer jacket.

Those were the two main points I was not sure of. Thanks very much for all the help and advice. Bob