[John Candle]

Me thinks it's the cable that is being moved from the basement to the living room is bad. A cable can look good from the outside , but have internal problems. As the cable is wiggeld and moved a broken center wire can make contact and not make contact or the internal structure might be compromised to allow the shielding part of the wire coax to touch the center wire. Or maybe the shielding part of the coax is broken or missing in some parts of the coax. I always look in the end part of the coax connector , so as to see if the outer metal shielding part of the coax has been pushed in toward the center wire conductor. If it has , I push the shielding away from the center conductor and scrape away any fine metal that might be on foam that separates the center wire from the outer shielding. . Also the center wire might be too long out past the end of the connector. Trim the wire back so the center wire is just beyond the end of the connector. Also if the center wire is cut to short and is down inside the connector , the center wire will not make contact. Substitution of known to be good coax and other componets will find the bad. Do not take the antenna in the house , keep it out side. The house can be of a construction of meterials like metal or thick/dence blocks that block reception. . Some coax has a loose fitting outer plastic jacket that allows all of the internal parts of the coax to slip and slide inside the jacket , this is not good.