Be careful of combining an antenna booster with any kind of satellite receiver connection. They don't go well together.

The reason is because SAT TV systems supply power on the center conductor of the coax cable to the heads on the dish (12 volts) and a plain old antenna booster like you find in most "OFF AIR" TV antenna systems in RV's have amplifiers of their own that BOOST the signal on the center conductor.

Any such booster should be removed if you are running Satellite TV. They are commonly found as a wall-plate like device where a TV would normally be connected, and run in line with the wire/coax to the ordinary blade-type antenna on most RV roofs.

They have an on/off switch on the wall plate, and a pair of LED indicators (green and red) to indicate if they are turned on.

~ Those two systems should be completely separated

If this means you have to run ONE wall plate for the SAT, and a separate one for the BLADE ANTENNA - that's what should be done, so that the two can never be cross-connected

Otherwise the antenna booster could try to amplify a full 12 volts DC, and that could be seriously bad...


The way the SAT TV system works is to amplify the signal from the satellite (several Gigahertz) so that it actually travels down the coax between the outer braid (ground) and the center conductor - like a microwave wave guide. The actual satellite signal is not on the copper center conductor, but travels instead through the white di-electric portion of the coax, for complicated reasons. High frequency RF is a very strange and weird thing to try to describe...

But in any case - the MICROWAVE AMPLIFIERS (on the dish) that the satellite system uses are powered by a straight and direct TWELVE VOLTS DC that are sent to them on the center copper conductor in the coax

All Satellite Receiver boxes do this, Direct TV or whoever

But the old fashioned BLADE antenna receives a signal directly on that same center conductor in the coax cable, and the amplifier tries to increase it's strength.

If instead of a weak signal, the blade amp gets a full twelve volts - guess what happens?

It isn't good....


The last thing on earth you want is an electrical fire in the wall of your RV!
In the BEST case scenario, the antenna booster will be trashed...

Blown transistors, and no longer workee



* I served for 20 years in the US NAVY as an Electronics Tech, and eventually became a RADAR Transmitter Instructor. I know what I am telling you

* I also once attended a week long seminar at Fleetwood RV Corporation in Elkhart Indiana - and they warned about the same thing


You can try making sure that any time SAT TV is run - you have the booster amp turned off, but the fail safe method is to have them completely separate



~ Wolfie out


PS: Conversely it may also screw up your expensive SAT DISH install...

 

what happened to the old days?
call in a tech don't touch what your not trained for,

 

FYI, the wall plate is NOT an amplifier. The wall plate sends 12 volts up the coax to the Winegard bat wing antenna, and then separates the 12 volts from the TV with a pass through capacitor. The amplifier is built into the antenna.

 

But what it is doing is powering the amplifier

And the amp is built into the antenna

The mis-conception between old style cable and modern gigawave satellite transmission is this:

In the old days cable TV sent the stuff they had up the center conductor, which is used for power now.

Typically 12VDC

The actual RF signal of high frequency sat signals SURROUNDS the center wire and travels through what amounts to a "WAVEGUIDE" that when you look at a cut piece of the cable is the white part of it that looks like an insulator - but it isn't.

The RF signal at that frequency is transmitted through the space between the outer metal braid or foil, and the center copper core - these form a tunnel for the micro-waves

(Trust me on this this isn't AM COAST to COAST)

The way high frequency RF acts at those short wavelengths is what makes that possible, they can squeeze through places ordinary RF waves can't.

But the down side is short wave lengths can't go as far as long wave lengths.

Only satellites made this work, beaming straight down with low power







SO! What I am telling you is do not power up a SATELLITE TV system, if you have CABLE connected.

They are completely different technologies

Cable systems use the center wire for sending low voltage video stuff...

A satellite system would scramble it, it would mask it with plain old 12VDC



(and probably ruin it for everyone in the park)