[TowerTalk] Ham radio vs. satellite dishes

[Tom Anderson]

Fellow Tower Talk members:

I'm considering changing from cable tv to one of the dish systems.  Has 
anyone had any problems with RFI, etc. to dish systems vs. cable and HF 
or VHF transmissions?  I use a 10 element log periodic at 50 ft. with a 
Collins 30-L-1 and a Kenwood TS 430S that I usually load to maybe 500 watts.

Some of the dish systems, that "advertise" giving you four digital 
boxes, actually give you only two and the other two sets are controlled 
via some type of RF link. My current QTH is so RF "tight" that cell 
phones don't work inside.  Inside my house (built in 1983) my cell phone 
often shows "roaming, out of area, or no signal" and we live less than a 
mile from an AT&T cell tower in the middle of the Dallas/Fort Worth 
area.   Oh your phone will ring inside my QTH, but to actually maintain 
a conversation you have to go outside.

Does the "dish" need to be located far from my crankup tower?  I've 
dealt with cable rfi problems and have been able to solve most of them, 
like loose fittings from the pole to the house that leak cable signals 
and in reverse let in RF energy.

 Fortunately my neighbors know how much I want to and do cooperate that 
they don't say anything any more, but if I hear through the grapevine 
that one of them is having an RFI problem I immediately offer my limited 
service and at least do a visual inspection.  Like the time I found a 
varmint had chewed through the jacket, shielding, and dielectric on one 
neighbors cable leaving only several feet of bare RG59 copper center 
conductor showing.  Besides my RFI, they were also receiving cable 
signals on TVs in their home NOT connected to cable on channels 2-13, no 
UHF TV channels.  They'd get Showtime on Channel 2, Movie channel on 3, 
HBO on channel 6, etc.  Yes this happened, I saw it and then did some 
tracking, at the homeowner's invitation of course,  and found about 3 
feet of RG59 or RG6 that was stapled along the edge of the house 
entirely stripped bare to the center conductor.  What was amazing was 
how good a reception of cable signals on a TV with just rabbit ears was 
being received.  I knew the  area tech rep at the time for the cable 
company and he got a technician out and had their problem fixed in a 
hurry since he and I had worked around our town to resolve cable/ham RFI 
issues.

Unfortunately he's not with the cable company any more and their techs 
aren't always very knowledgeable about RFI issues, like the one tech who 
came to my house to fix a problem and just pointed to my 50 foot crank 
up tower and immediately said it was causing RFI, even before he checked 
his company's cable installation.

Also I notice most cable companies are going from the old RG59 to RG6 
now for home service as they "say" the RG6 gives them better specs on 
digital signals.

73 de Tom, WW5L





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