Any ideas?

[neil_kc1]

Hi guys,

Sunday afternoon I was watching the Chiefs and Broncos game, about half time my signal completely dropped out. None of my channels were working. I have an outdoor long range UHF antenna, a channel master signal amp, and a filter for blocking cellular interference. My set usually show my local CBS channel with 100 signal and 100 quality; quality was 0. It was just gone as were all the others. Later the signal and quality was back as if nothing had happened. It has repeated this a couple of times since. I am trying to figure out what is going on.

My thoughts were:

1. possible water in the cable, maybe at the grounding block, freezing and interrupting the signal. it has been bitterly cold
2. perhaps my neighbors house is heating up and producing a thermal updraft which is blocking the signal
3. my tv tuners are freezing up when the sets are turned off and need time to thaw out
4. the sun this time of year is having an effect on my antenna blocking signal, ( i used to have a free to air dish that had that problem at certain times of the day.

I am open to suggestions about what is going on.

Thanks for any help ahead of time.

 

[GravelChan]

Hi guys,

Sunday afternoon I was watching the Chiefs and Broncos game, about half time my signal completely dropped out. None of my channels were working. I have an outdoor long range UHF antenna, a channel master signal amp, and a filter for blocking cellular interference. My set usually show my local CBS channel with 100 signal and 100 quality; quality was 0. It was just gone as were all the others. Later the signal and quality was back as if nothing had happened. It has repeated this a couple of times since. I am trying to figure out what is going on.

My thoughts were:

1. possible water in the cable, maybe at the grounding block, freezing and interrupting the signal. it has been bitterly cold
2. perhaps my neighbors house is heating up and producing a thermal updraft which is blocking the signal
3. my tv tuners are freezing up when the sets are turned off and need time to thaw out
4. the sun this time of year is having an effect on my antenna blocking signal, ( i used to have a free to air dish that had that problem at certain times of the day.

I am open to suggestions about what is going on.

Thanks for any help ahead of time.

Check all connections, especially those outdoors for a center wire that is too short that when it gets cold shorten up enough to lose contact.

 

[harshness]

Rather than "bitter cold", a temperature would be useful to give is a clue as to what's in play (and perhaps more importantly, what's not in play). Whether the amp is a "pre-amp" or a "distribution amp" is noteworthy (or whether you live in Missouri or Kansas).

I looked on Wunderground and just after 3pm was the "heat of the day" (in the teens?) but it was still well below freezing and the sun was well on its way down so unless the connection is somewhat protected from the great outdoors, a failure there seems somewhat unlikely.

Unless your TV location or the location of your amplifier is dropping well below freezing, temperature shouldn't be an issue (especially once the TV has been running for a while). TV electronics should be good down to minus temperatures as the LCD panels will fail (and perhaps be permanently damaged) long before the electronics will.

Heat (nor cold for that matter) shouldn't significantly impact signal propagation. Snow or sleet maybe, but air currents not so much. Any effects that wind has on a TV signal are usually related to leaves or debris blowing or the antenna itself wagging and that will typically be intermittent (not zero as you described). OTA is not particularly sensitive to "solar outages" that come from a dish pointing directly at the sun that happen in the Spring and Fall.

I'd be looking at some sort of man-made failure (perhaps unplugging the amp power) as it looks like things had been below freezing since the 24th. I'm dubious that a connection would have returned with even lower temperatures if the cable was having connector penetration issues.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Maybe your pre-amp is failing? It's happened to me, causing complete signal loss (the pre-amp I used doesn't "pass through" the signal if it's turned off)

 

[Horsepower]

Are you using tuners on an old TV?

 

[neil_kc1]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I am using a 2017 Phillips TV and a Channel master DVR +, I have a pre-amp outdoors, seems to be working fine now that the weather is a bit warmer. I think it must have something to do with the weather. I will check my outside connections for short center wire as suggested once it warms up a bit.