Newbie VOOM OTA problem

[Ilya]

He said he just learned that also from Installs Inc.

What kind of training does an installer need to learn a simple fact that an amplified antenna might need a power source...???

 

[Mr. Old School]

What kind of training does an installer need to learn a simple fact that an amplified antenna might need a power source...???

Well the Voom people are going to tell you that the Winegard Sensar II gets it's power from the Voom receiver, therefore the installers don't even bring along the power source that came with the antenna. My installer told me that the antenna needed more power than the receiver was giving it, but he was just doing what Voom told him to do.

I have no clue what Voom is thinking when you have a power source provided with the antenna and they tell you NOT to use it.

A lot of these problems such as diplexers, bad antenna aiming and such are coming direct from Voom. Maybe someone needs to educate them, not the installers.

 

[MasterFX1]

Ilya- not to sound snippy, I really do appreciate all the help I'm getting here. But both the installer and myself did not realize there are two different types of voltage return for diplexors ant/sat and sat only.

Wasch 24's photo's made it painfully obvious what the problem was. Maybe Installs or Voom should send those two photos to installers. But in the bigger picture... look at this forum, look at all the botched installs. This is money hemoraging out of VOOM's pocketbook. You've got the added cost of re-installs and de-installs, plus the lost revenue of lost subs.

It was the installer himself who said to me that there really should be a "Voom Install Manual" for the installers. This installer remarked that he does installs for E*, D*, V* and TWC... and that only the V* installs take more than one attempt on average. He also noted that most times, it's equiptment (mainly the STB) failure.

 

[MasterFX1]

Well the Voom people are going to tell you that the Winegard Sensar II gets it's power from the Voom receiver, therefore the installers don't even bring along the power source that came with the antenna.

My installer said that no power supply ever came with the antennas.

Maybe someone needs to educate (Voom), not the installers.

Agreed.

 

[MasterFX1]

Got the right diplexor on the roof... finally. I get the low-power I was hoping to. Funny thing... one of the channels that came in fine before the antenna recieved voltage, now doesn't come in. I see it trying, but it never locks.

In my physical location, I am 22 miles from the community digital tower which houses digital NBC (on VHF-12) and 1/2 a mile from analog NBC (on VHF-13). Could the analog 13 be so strong when my antenna is getting voltage, that it disrupts digital 12?

My current work-around is to pull the diplexer off the back of the STB and connect the combined coax line directly into the 8VSB module. I only do this to watch that one channel that I'm having this new problem with.

 

[Ilya]

MasterFX1,
If you suspect that the pre-amp in the antenna is too powerful and you loose one of the channels as a result of the overload, you can try an attenuator from RadioShack.

 

[MasterFX1]

Using the "Off Air Signal Quality" ticker on the setup menus, I found that the quality value drops in half (on the channel in question) when the Sensar II is getting voltage.

Would you put this attenuator before or after the dixplexer-splitter on the way to the STB?

Does voltage come from the Sat input, the 8VSB input or both?

I'm guessing that the attenuator should go inbetween the depilex-splitter and the 8VSB module?

Even if it works, I'm still physically taking a walk to the back of the STB whenever I want to view that channel, right?

Thanks again for all the help.