Hi all,I've recently moved into a relatively new (2007) house which has aloft aerial and a Philex 2-way aerial distribution amplifier, thelatter which I suspect was fitted by the previous owner given thatwhilst it is mounted inside a cupboard the power isn't so lead has tocome out of the door hence stopping it closing. There are also 3aerial outlets throughout the house so that's probably anothergiveaway!So, to neaten this up I've installed power inside the cupboard andmoved the loft aerial to a less in-your-way location inside the loft -all correctly aligned and working hunkydory.The distribution amp is a Philex 2-way () with adjustable gain and I waswondering how one goes about setting up the correct amount of gain tosuit? Of course, with analogue it might've been more obvious given thevarying quality of picture however in the works-or-it-doesn't digitalworld it doesn't seem quite so obvious.With the gain set to the low and high extremes my Humax PVR (furthestfrom the amp) signal detection page varies between 78% and 90%respectively, both cases providing 100% signal quality and a perfectpicture. My el-cheapo signal meter similarly varies between ~60dBuVand ~80dBuV (max'd out - could be higher). With no amp in the loop Iget 62% on the Humax, still a good picture, and ~50dBuV (lowestfigure) on the signal meter.Any suggestions? Whilst I'm getting a perfect picture during testingeven on the lowest gain want to set it as 'properly' I can. The factthe gain is adjustable suggests to me just setting it at the max isnot really what you're meant to do!For what it's worth I am 35 miles away from the transmitter (Mendip)and judging by the varying arrangement of aerials in the surroundingarea Freeview reception is seemingly somewhat of a challenge here(admittedly perhaps the aerial situation is a consequence of the pre-switchover situation).Mathew

at 35 miles you might as well set it to max and be done with it.Unless you overload the TV input, the gain wont make a huge amount of difference, as the signal and the noise will both get boosted, and DTB is all about signal to noise.In short, it probably makes sod all difference what its set to, in your case! :-)

How to set aerial distribution amp gain?

Oct 13, 2010 26 Replies

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Mathew Newton 15 years ago

Yes - as mentioned I think the myriad of aerial configurations in the surrounding area is a hangover from the pre-switchover days when reception was somewhat more difficult.

Mathew

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John Rumm 15 years ago

Might have helped if you had made that a little clearer to start with! ;-)

Would of saved lots of words about overloading amps from strong analogue channels.

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Mathew Newton 15 years ago

Apologies, yes, I can see now it wasn't very well worded and could've been misinterpreted. Truth be told, until the resulting discussion I didn't appreciate the significance!

Mathew

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The Natural Philosopher 15 years ago

howver since these things are pretty wide bad and have no AGC, its possible that anything in the 50Mhz upwards sort of area may upset them, too. which is a lot of mobile comms.

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tony sayer 15 years ago

Such as?, one might ask these days other than TETRA perhaps?..

Anyone had instances of GSM base stations causing problems?..

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Frank Erskine 15 years ago

Amateur, PMR etc, as I suggested earlier.

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tony sayer 15 years ago

In article , Frank Erskine scribeth thus

PMR these days very few and far between like Amateur round these parts...

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