Freesat Blues

[excollier]

Went to install Freesat to a house yesterday.
Normal stuff, put up dish got it aligned, brought the cable into the attic, good signal to there as you would expect.
Next thing was I needed to diplex the sat and uhf to get both down one existing RG6 lead to the required tv. Both uhf and IF levels fine exiting the diplexer to the correct lead.
At the other end uhf is perfect but absolutely no satellite signal, not a hint.
I tried two different splitter faceplates and a uhf/sat splitter box, all of which I have used successfully on several previous occasions. I did fit an f-plg directly to the end of the cable and test that too.
The way that the house has been cabled means that there is no chance of pulling a new cable through ( too many twists and turns ) and the people concerned were, understandably, not willing to have an external cable wrapped aroun the building an then around the room to get to the tv in question.
Would I be right in saying that the internal cabling may be kinked or in some way damaged and that is what is stopping the higher satellite frequencies passing to the other end of the cable?
The electrician swears he did not fit any spilts or other face plates en route, but in a finished house there is no way to tell.
I had to remove the dish and take it all home again!

 

[timo_w2s]

I would have thought even a damaged or bad cable would get at least a hint of a signal, especially the lower band Astra 2D frequencies unless it's a very long run. Was the cable double screened? Maybe there was a tiny break in the cable and the voltage was not getting up it to power the LNB?

 

[PaulR]

Yes, it sounds to me as though there's a break in the cable somewhere. Not a huge break, so that the RF can jump across, but enough to stop the DC. As an outside there might have been a short but that would surely have stopped the TV signals as well.

I would have put either a shorting plug or a 75ohm terminator at one end and then checked with a multimeter for DC resistace from the other end.

 

[excollier]

I would have thought even a damaged or bad cable would get at least a hint of a signal, especially the lower band Astra 2D frequencies unless it's a very long run. Was the cable double screened? Maybe there was a tiny break in the cable and the voltage was not getting up it to power the LNB?

Yes the cable used is double screened. It does sound like a damaged cable to me. But it will be near impossible to replace.
Thanks, good to know I am at least thinking along the right lines, no pun intended.