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Old 4-Jul-2015, 2:32 PM   #9
DougM
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 7
Well, I've had some time to do some more investigation on this.

First I removed the amp from the equation. No difference, still no signal. I swapped in a different TV tuner card. Still no signal.

I started to look for cabling opens/shorts/damage. With the cable hooked to the antenna, I measured a few ohms between center and shield from my TV room. This was a bit surprising to me. Disconnected the antenna, and I get an open circuit. The cable seems ok.

The antenna is a Winegard 7698 (I think I got it wrong above).

Took the balun/cartridge thingy off the antenna, pulled out its PCB, and it looks ok. The (few) components seem to ohm out as they should.

With the balun off then antenna, I now get a DC open circuit on the balun so I turn my attention to the antenna.

The stiff rod/wire thingys going from the balun to the elements ohm out as open circuit on the front half, but the rear half seem to be shorted together... This seems unexpected to me. The rear elements on each side are connected to their own strip of metal that run above and below the boom. I would have expected them to be isolated from each other.

I pulled off the plastic end cap from the boom, and it looks like there are rivets going all the way through the assembly which look like they are shorting everything together.

I know that DC isn't the same as RF, but this seemed surprising to me. Could this antenna have an assembly error? Seems unlikely.

Thoughts?
doug
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