News

Due to the recent high winds we've had over the past few days I was called out to this TV Aerial at Offerton farm near Droitwich on Saturday 9th of February 2019.

The following news item is taken from my Cowboys & Bodgers gallery.

Location - Offerton near Droitwich

Complaint - Sudden loss of all TV channels.

Fault - This particular fault is not over common as I only attend to a few each year but I do see many more potential problems while on my travels around the county.

PVC tape or occasionally plastic cable ties combined with a installer ignorance / incompetence is the primary reason for the loss of channels.

Firstly plastic cable ties should never be used to hold a TV coax to a pole.
Sunlight / UV light will make them brittle long before anything else needs to be replaced, allowing the coax to eventually swing in the wind, as can be seen in my photo above.

In this case it was PVC tape (industry standard) that was used.
Normally the tape will last as long as the Aerial, in this case perhaps as much as
40 to 50 years but because this particular installer was tight or possibly ignorant he only passed the tape around the pole once.

Sunlight will soon degrade this single layer of tape which in turn will allow the coax to come loose and flap in the wind, eventually snapping the soft copper inner core inside the dipole cap, as can be seen in my photo above.

Remedy - If the tape had have been passed around the pole by a minimum of 2 or 3 times then this TV Aerial could have gone on for another 5 to 10 years or so.

As this particular TV Aerial was an old grouped type and not efficient at receiving some of the lesser watched TV channels it was decided to upgrade to a wide band Digital type while I was there.