does it matter what coaxal cable i use?

[samhain]

i have three receivers running all were installed with rg6 coax. but a friend i work with wants me to help him install his dish. i told him to buy rg6 but he says he has a mile of cable in his basement that is not rg6. if he uses it will it affect his reception?

[slugger]

You really need to find out what kind of cable he has, but I have used many different types of cable with no problems.

Let us know what kind of cable he has.

[doccatv]

If at all possible use quad rg6 doc

[smack]

It make ALOT of difference what kind of cable he uses. Chances are he's got RG/59...probably cheap Rg59 if it was installed with the house. The center conductor is less than half the size of RG/6, and about four times the loss.

IF you scan the board, there's a sh*tload of posts for "only getting half the transponders"...most of the time, this is the result of loss somewhere in the system.

In addition to the signal coming back from the LNBs, the IRDs are expressing +13VDC and/or +18 VDC onto the coax to power the LNB and select which polorization to use. RG/59 is gonna drop those voltage significantly, and may (probably) cause flakey switching and absolutely increase the likelyhood of rain fade (lost signal)...usually when there's something really good on.

An in-line amp won't help, because it'll suck that much more power (increasing the probability of a switching failure), and it won't have enough signal margin to amplify (you'll just have "louder" noise with the "louder" signal).

It just ain't worth it. You're gonna go through all the bother to get the thing set up, and it'll be flakey....maybe OK in the beginning..but it's going to crash. Decent coax is not that expensive. If you're real lucky, you can use the old crap to pull in the new cable.

Refuse to help unless he decides to swap the cable...tell him to install his own train wreck and not to call you when it dies or starts having intermittent bombs.

You can put the new coax in now, or you can put it in later, but I guarantee to you, you'll be installing it at some point.

"Trust me"

JMHO, FWIW


Scott

[SMOKER]

Smack is right as usual. As far as useing that old cable,it might have a piece of a staple in it or be kinked and damaged some place. I run into damaged cable on new spools , let alone running old used stuff.Leave the clothes line up in the basement and run a good RG6 without any barrels in between and shiny new fittings.