Equipment Failures

If you loose your TV pictures it's always worth having a closer look at the TV Aerial on the roof, if you can! especially if you loose signal when it's wet or raining. Over the years I've used a small pair of binoculars, which I carry on the van to look at Aerials from the ground. I've then often noticed many TV Aerials in a similar condition to the one in my image (A) above. The protective dipole cap has come off or even disintegrated with the UV from sun light (as this one has) Much more serious than this is the fact that if the TV Aerial is this old, and I can age this one quite accurately at around 43 years the coax cable is almost certainly going to be the of the same age. Coax of this age, and older is always in need of replacement if it's been exposed to sunlight on a roof. Once a coax gets this old (See image B above) it will often allow rain water to enter via cracks in the outer casing which will then flow down to what ever the coax is connected to, whether that be a TV, a TV wall plate, an amplifiers power unit or even a SKY box etc. Over the years I've seen many video recorders, 12 volt power units as well as half a dozen TV's destroyed by water ingress.

This is a very interesting TV Aerial lookalike. Although I call it a TV Aerial in fact it's not a TV Aerial at all but a very good lookalike, perhaps sold in their thousands over the years to unsuspecting DIYers. It's best described as a collective quantity of aluminium prongs, all of which are exactly the same size and all with exactly the same spacing neatly laid out on a length of square tubing. Click HERE and scroll down to my news item dated 22nd of December 2015 for more information.

This TV Aerial marked on it's dipole cap "Diamond Colour" has a fault that still has me baffled. I've been called out to half a dozen of these Aerials over the last couple of years after customers have complained they have suddenly lost all TV pictures. A fellow installer who also covers the Kidderminster and Stourport areas informs me that he has been called out to a dozen or more. Looking from the ground and indeed on close inspection everything looks fine with no sign of any water ingress or damage to the dipole but once this Aerial fails, it passes no signal to the coax and therefore needs to be replaced. Almost all of them are less than 10 years old.

As a general rule of thumb the more plastic used in the make up of a TV Aerial the shorter its life will be. This Aerial made by Diamond Colour is a typical example of the problem. I was recently called out to a customer in Hillery road, Worcester who had been experiencing TV reception problems for some considerable time. On arrival at the property it was obvious as to what the problem was. Looking up at the Aerial before knocking at the door it was clear to see that this TV Aerial was missing a quantity of it's elements. I often see Aerials which are missing one or two elements and more often than not there is no significant drop in signal strength (Dependant on which elements are missing) but this one had lost 5 so it was unable to deliver enough signal to the TV it was connected to. Interestingly this example is not the usual problem where the UV light makes the plastic brittle but just a poor design regarding the attachment of the aluminium elements to the Aerials boom via it's plastic insulators/holders.
This Aerial was only 12 years old whereas a good quality, well installed TV Aerial will often last in excess of 40 years

Over the years I've lost count of how many times I've been called out to customers with TV reception problems only to discover that it's just the shop bought fly lead which is to blame. If you have one of these leads behind the TV and you're experiencing reception problems before you try anything else change this fly lead even if it's brand new and come straight out of the packaging direct from the shop, I have seen and identified dozens of these which don't pass signal and because they are so new looking customers often don't suspect the lead as to having a potential fault.

This 12 Volt Power Supply seems to be more unreliable than many other makes. I've been called out half a dozen times or so over the past 12 months only to find that the loss of TV pictures was due to this Vision Power Supply. At least half of the ones I've found displayed an unusual fault in that the green LED light was still lit and the 12 volts was still being produced but the signal was then corrupted by the unit. The others I've found were totally inactive and dead. When this PSU is part of an Aerial system and goes faulty it will also adversely effect all the TVs that are indirectly connected to it, often making people think that it must be the TV Aerial that is at fault. For the reasons stated above, I do not use, or recommend the Vision PSU.

This TV Amplifier or booster as it's more commonly known as is made by Maxview and although it's been sold throughout the UK in the large DIY stores I've sometimes been informed by customers that they were also fitted by a previous professional TV Aerial installer. More often than not I find them in a loft connected to the incoming TV coax from the Aerial and either having 2 outlets (as this one has) or 4 outlets. Which ever version they both seem to suffer with the same reliability issues as over recent years I've been called out to a fair number of these all of which have been less than 10 years old. Sometimes the red LED light is still illuminated but they just fail to amplify the signal. As a comparison, a good quality amplifier should (normally) last in excess of 20 years and over the years I've seen many still working well at 30 years plus!

The white plastic caps covering the entrance to the feed-horn on SKY and Freesat mini dishes are now increasingly becoming brittle, allowing rainwater to enter into the internal workings of the LNB and destroying them.

Vast quantities of these dish's have been installed, many of them in excess of 10 years ago so this particular problem is going to be round for a long time to come.

I was recently called out by a customer to change a SKY dish that had become so rusty it left ugly rust marks on the patio below every time it rained. Also my customers wife was put off sitting on the patio with an ugly rusting, perforated, metal plate above her head. The dish was fitted 8 years ago but what makes this very unusual is that also on the same day, at the same time a second, identical dish was also fitted by the same SKY engineer on the wall of a converted garage barely 15 meters away (See my photo above) Not only was the face of the rusty dish in poor condition but also all of the bracketry behind the dish was also affected in the same way. Whereas the dish on the garage had absolutely NO sign of rust anywhere.