That's the brand Walmart sells and it's cheap. Cheap junk. Some months back I bought three 4 foot rg6 Phillips cables from Walmart and right away an F connector fell off one of the cables. Took it back and bought another and thought I'd live happily ever after.
Didn't happen.
About a week ago I decided to unhook my two combined (ganged) 4 bays and turn then toward Columbus, Ohio to see if they would pick up the channels there. Let me tell ya', getting those things separated in that tiny attic isn't easy. I was ready to toss cold water on them.
After a few hours of unhookig and re-hooking, the job was done and I had them facing eastward toward Columbus.
The antenna's wouldn't do poo!
In fact channel 53 out of Chillicothe (a bit south of Columbus) wouldn't even stay in consistently and I picked that one up with either a 2 or 4 bay before. Something was screwy.
Three days later and back up there I went to do it all over again and point them back toward Cincinnati. Once it was done everything was back again...and then I moved the four foot Phillips cables a bit and lost reception on two channels. I started moving the cables around and noticed the weaker channels such as VHF 9 & 12 and UHF 14 & 48 would go in and out. The F connectors were tight on the antennas, combiner, and amp so it has to be the cables.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this rather long post, one of the F fittings fell off of a Philips cable right off the bat so that's a good indication that that brand of coax should be avoided. The fact that just moving the cables even a little causes signal loss cements this believe at least IMO.
Didn't happen.
About a week ago I decided to unhook my two combined (ganged) 4 bays and turn then toward Columbus, Ohio to see if they would pick up the channels there. Let me tell ya', getting those things separated in that tiny attic isn't easy. I was ready to toss cold water on them.
After a few hours of unhookig and re-hooking, the job was done and I had them facing eastward toward Columbus.
The antenna's wouldn't do poo!
In fact channel 53 out of Chillicothe (a bit south of Columbus) wouldn't even stay in consistently and I picked that one up with either a 2 or 4 bay before. Something was screwy.
Three days later and back up there I went to do it all over again and point them back toward Cincinnati. Once it was done everything was back again...and then I moved the four foot Phillips cables a bit and lost reception on two channels. I started moving the cables around and noticed the weaker channels such as VHF 9 & 12 and UHF 14 & 48 would go in and out. The F connectors were tight on the antennas, combiner, and amp so it has to be the cables.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this rather long post, one of the F fittings fell off of a Philips cable right off the bat so that's a good indication that that brand of coax should be avoided. The fact that just moving the cables even a little causes signal loss cements this believe at least IMO.
