What Not To Do

Tale Submitted by: Dave Thomas

Another one which I wrote a few years ago but its still happening today ! :

Yesterday’s job was at a small terrace of 4 ex railway cottages standing on their own
in quite a good reception spot a few miles from here. ?
The owners of the end house had lived there for a few years and had survived with a set-top aerial whilst they were doing the house up. They had recently had a two storey extension built and the builder had volunteered to fit an aerial. ?
When they came to moving into the extension and had bought a small freeview tv, they found that digital didn’t work at all and analogue was very poor. I was called and the nice young lady told me that her husband had tried everything but still with no luck. She said that the aerial was in the loft but it ought to be ok as it was quite big!
I arrived and checked the signal at the only socket with the spectrum analyser. Sure enough it was very poor. I know that a loft aerial should be fine in this location both for the Rowridge and Hannington transmitters and in any case I was hoping that it would be as it was pouring with rain! She showed me to her bedroom, which seemed a good start on a cold and wet day!!
(well, actually the loft hatch, which was in the bedroom) and I climbed up to inspect.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought someone was testing me to see how many faults I could spot: ?This is the absolute truth and I wish I had had a camera: (This was before phones with cameras were common).

1) There was a fairly decent Blake DMX wideband aerial on the loft floor.
2) It was facing in exactly the third direction away from both transmitters.
3) All of the elements were still folded flat as they were packed in the box.
4) The dipole unit was not fitted in the usual place but its’ two lobes were neatly taped to the single “parasitic” element (in good metal contact just to make sure it was useless!)
5) The reflectors were mounted backwards rather like dart flights!
6) Inside the connection box, the centre core and the screening of the cheap white coax were twisted together and clamped in both the screening clamp AND the main terminal shorting them both together.
7) At the other end of yards of unnecessary coax, there was a white plastic co ax plug plugged into the OUTPUT of a two way amplifier and the FM INPUT was feeding to the room!
8) The terminal screw inside the plug was shorting to the outer metal (as usual) and the output (input!!) plug was just the same..
What really bothers me is that it is highly likely thet the customer was charged for this although even she could see the funny side when I showed her just how many things could be wrong with just one simple set-up.