How bad does splitting off a outdoor FM antenna do? I splited off my radio to another radio for my computer and really it doesnt seem like it effected anything. I thought it might of took out a lot of the power off of my main stereo, but it seems to be doing just as good. I can still get KFTG a lot of the time. The only thing I notice is that on my radio I splitted off to KTXN in Victoria seems to be more weak than on my main radio, is there a way I might could clear that up? Both tuners can pull in Houston great.
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Splitting a antenna
- Thread starter jras20
- Start date
C
CW
Guest
jras20 said:
How did you "split" it? using a TV splitter or just tied to coaxes together? With a good splitter, you only lose 3db of signal.....thats not much unless you are talking very weak....KXTN is probably at the threshold which is why you noticed the difference....you COULD try an amplified at the antenna or just before the splitter to make up for coax or splitter loss...but most amps out there are high gain and crater under the smallest amount of adjacent signals, etc....(Crunch mode)..What YOU need is a 3-6db gain amp with high overload value...something at the antenna to overcome the coax loss and get you best overall Signal to Noise ratio
N
newschoolrocker
Guest
jras20 said:CW said:
I used a TV splitter, it has 3db out on each end, KTXN is clear but is not on stereo on my secound tuner, on my main tuner its fine, I dont understand that. I may look at a amp I got about 15 laying around
Let us not forget that coax is lossy, if you have a ton of it running in between.
Jras, for our problem RDS receivers we have been using a little inline rf amp from good ole' Rat Shack - model 15-1170. We have found it to be a cheap and surprisingly-not-so-dirty way to make up signal loss due to splitters, long runs of coax and/or hastily-made connectors.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103913
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103913
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
jras20 said:I used a TV splitter, it has 3db out on each end, KTXN is clear but is not on stereo on my secound tuner, on my main tuner its fine, I dont understand that. I may look at a amp I got about 15 laying around
3dB means you lose half of the power (the splitters are rated in power dB, not voltage dB). If you have a good noise free front end in your radio / tuner, it shouldn't matter that much. From your location, your main problem with Houston is flutter caused by airplanes. You should have relatively few deep fades. I recall going to college in Austin in the late 70's - KRBE Houston was almost like a local.
When you said "radio" - I am thinking cheap front end transistors. An amplifier "might" clear up the radio, but if your tuner is really low noise it will probably make your tuner worse.
There is NO WAY a $30 amplifier from Radio Shack or any other vendor will be using a $30 low noise transistor. Let alone the $100 low noise front end transistor that many top of the line tuners used. Bottom line - put the amp on the radio leg of the coax after the splitter. Remember - noise sums according to the root sum square law, which means in simple terms that the noisiest component in the system very quickly dominates the system noise.
rbrucecarter5 said:jras20 said:I used a TV splitter, it has 3db out on each end, KTXN is clear but is not on stereo on my secound tuner, on my main tuner its fine, I dont understand that. I may look at a amp I got about 15 laying around
3dB means you lose half of the power (the splitters are rated in power dB, not voltage dB). If you have a good noise free front end in your radio / tuner, it shouldn't matter that much. From your location, your main problem with Houston is flutter caused by airplanes. You should have relatively few deep fades. I recall going to college in Austin in the late 70's - KRBE Houston was almost like a local.
When you said "radio" - I am thinking cheap front end transistors. An amplifier "might" clear up the radio, but if your tuner is really low noise it will probably make your tuner worse.
There is NO WAY a $30 amplifier from Radio Shack or any other vendor will be using a $30 low noise transistor. Let alone the $100 low noise front end transistor that many top of the line tuners used. Bottom line - put the amp on the radio leg of the coax after the splitter. Remember - noise sums according to the root sum square law, which means in simple terms that the noisiest component in the system very quickly dominates the system noise.
Your right, yeah I have very few fades if any, even with the splitter on. In most cases even in a strong skip I can still recieve Houston pretty decent, but a lot of the time if that happens I get stuff from Shreveport all the way to New Orleans to brownsville.
I agree with the previous points. I suggested making up gain only since you mentioned one tuner dropping out of stereo when you installed the splitter. Sounds like that tuner's mono-to-stereo threshold is set to a higher signal level than your main unit.
Inserting a relatively low gain amp - such as the one I mentioned - might raise the signal level back up to the point of switching your tuner into stereo, without causing too much havoc to reception.
By the way, how did that AM loop antenna ever work out for you?
Inserting a relatively low gain amp - such as the one I mentioned - might raise the signal level back up to the point of switching your tuner into stereo, without causing too much havoc to reception.
By the way, how did that AM loop antenna ever work out for you?
I've got a splitter on my antenna, where I can plug in my iPod radio remote for RDS, and see no difference with or without the splitter. Where I have seen a difference, is when I took two magnets, and put them on the splitter, I had it on a weak station when I put them on, and it did improve the reception
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