03/07/14
Last Fridays thunderstorms in Worcestershire caused havoc to many families weekend TV watching. I personally received more than a dozen calls directly related to the weather. Brown and Fincher in Droitwich also received a similar amount of calls with every caller complaining of the same problem.With each call I received a pattern quickly emerged. Many people reported hearing a loud clap of thunder and if they were watching TV at the same time a sudden loss of TV pictures.
Many callers thought their TV Aerial had been struck by lightning but in all the call outs I made over last weekend and early this week none of the TV Aerials I saw and homes I visited had any damage to the TV Aerial.
Without exception all of the calls I made were to homes where the only damage was to TV Aerial amplifier. Although I have seen this problem many times over the 24 years I've been installing TV Aerials, this time was like no other.
After a thunderstorm I can usually expect 1 or maybe 2 calls but for some odd reason last Friday's storms did more damage than I've ever seen before.
It did not seem to matter how old or indeed the make,model or type of amplifier but just the proximity of the property relative to the thunderstorm.
All of the amplifiers that I saw still showed signs of life, in other words if they had a light on, the light continued to shine and the power supply within them continued to buzz as normal so it was part of the printed circuit board inside the amplifier that was affected / damaged.
I'm still looking into the reasons/possible causes as to why it's often only the TV amplifier within a household that stops working after a thunderstorm and why last Friday's storms were so destructive.
Should I receive any more information regarding this subject I will post that news here.
