I just bought 50 feet of RG6 unshielded coax to test an antenna on a TV towards the front of the house. To my surprise I find it appearantly makes a great FM radio antenna even when not hooked up to the antenna. Mainly on analog Ch 9 but some into Ch 10. Makes sense since the station that comes in is 95.9. The double 95.9 is 191.8 MHz which is upper part of Ch 9. Ok when hooked into the antenna and pre-amp I get the station in somewhat all the way from Ch 3 thru Ch 16. The station is less than a mile from my house.

Ok 3 questions.

A) How is this going to effect my digital reception?

B) Would using quad shielded RG6 eliminate this?

C) Seems I may need a FM trap. Any suggestions? And would it go before or after the pre-amp?

Hey, there,

A) All depends on how close the FM and channel 9 transmitters are to your antenna.

B) Quad shield might be a good idea if the stations are both full-powered and within about three miles. Otherwise, the regular stuff is fine.

C) You know what a UVSJ is? The similar HLSJ may be used as an FM trap. The high side passes everything from channel 7 through UHF. Terminate its low side if you're not planning to hook up an FM receiver to the wiring. HLSJs cost less than $5 and, with low-VHF attenuation of -25 dB or more, they're better than many FM traps. Of course, a terminated HLSJ will only work where there's no broadcasts on 2-6.

The trap or HLSJ always goes inline before the pre-amp. The desired signals will be cleaner. Why amplify RF you ultimately want to get rid of?

Originally Posted by Don_M

Hey, there,

A) All depends on how close the FM and channel 9 transmitters are to your antenna.

I don't have a station on Ch 9 but I do on Ch 8 and Ch 10 both of which are about 70 miles away. As I said I can hear the station on every analog channel from Ch 3 thru Ch 16. With Ch 9 it's coming in well as it would on a radio. As I said the radio tower is about 3/4 of mile form my house. According to FM fool the station comes in at -8.9 NM(dB)

C) You know what a UVSJ is? The similar HLSJ may be used as an FM trap. The high side passes everything from channel 7 through UHF. Terminate its low side if you're not planning to hook up an FM receiver to the wiring. HLSJs cost less than $5 and, with low-VHF attenuation of -25 dB or more, they're better than many FM traps. Of course, a terminated HLSJ will only work where there's no broadcasts on 2-6.

We have Low-VHF, Hi-VHF and UHF digital channels in my area.