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Need tips on running cable to my attic for OTA antenna

530 Views 5 Replies 5 Participants Last post by 94SupraTT, Dec 20, 2005

94SupraTT

Discussion Starter · Dec 20, 2005

I plan on installing a OTA antenna in my attic to improve my OTA reception for HD UHF stations. The walls near the back of my TV as exterior walls and I have read that most interior walls are not insulated but since mine aren't interior walls I would have a heck of a time fishing cable throw the insulation. Can anyone give me some tips? Thanks.

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tibber

· #2 · Dec 20, 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by 94SupraTT
I plan on installing a OTA antenna in my attic to improve my OTA reception for HD UHF stations. The walls near the back of my TV as exterior walls and I have read that most interior walls are not insulated but since mine aren't interior walls I would have a heck of a time fishing cable throw the insulation. Can anyone give me some tips? Thanks.

Yup, wall fishing can be more fun than bass fishing.

Some suggestions: try a heavy steel weight or steel chain tied to a string that you can find with a bigass magnet.

Try a solid fish tape (again steel is your friend...) to push down thru the layers of insulation. Or in my case, I used a fairly solid structured cable (2 RG6+2Cat5e+2fibre). To find it in the room, I used a tone generator with an inductive pickup.

And there is nothing wrong with cutting a few small holes in the wall to guide the cable. Sure, gonna have some patching to do--then just put a BIG tv in front so no one notices...

Good luck and Merry Christmas,

Tom

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kenglish

· #3 · Dec 20, 2005

If you can get a piece of thin, heavy steel, grind the edge to a dull point and drill a hole in the other end.....something like the business end of a hoe, but about 1x3"

Once you get this inside the wall, with a string attached, it will usually drop between the sheetrock and the fiberglass insulation. Sometimes, a huge steel washer (from a 1 or 1-1/2" bolt) will do.

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ClubSteeler

· #4 · Dec 20, 2005

My TV is in a corner that is about impossible to get to in the attic due to the pitch of the roof. I hope to be able to fish a cable someday, but not looking forward to it. In the meantime, I just got a cheap A/B switch for a couple bucks.

So I can switch either cable or antenna on to the cable run to my living room tv. Then out of the wall I split it, one to the STB, the other to the ANT input.

It works super. The only disadvantage being that when I want to watch HD, I have to switch the TV to Antenna and then get up and go into the garage and flip the switch to antenna. It's no big deal... do it once a day at 8:00pm cause almost nothing is on network TV in HD other than primetime.

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Bill Johnson

· #5 · Dec 20, 2005

Exterior walls present awful problems. So I recommend coming down through the nearest interior wall and all the way through to the basement. And then coming up through a more manageable foot or so of the exterior wall to the TV. Hopefully, this won't lengthen the cable run beyond 50 ft. and should not require splitting. At my distances, I treat splitters as the enemy of OTA reception and in my setup avoided them like the plague.

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94SupraTT

Discussion Starter · #6 · Dec 20, 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson
Exterior walls present awful problems. So I recommend coming down through the nearest interior wall and all the way through to the basement. And then coming up through a more manageable foot or so of the exterior wall to the TV. Hopefully, this won't lengthen the cable run beyond 50 ft. and should not require splitting. At my distances, I treat splitters as the enemy of OTA reception and in my setup avoided them like the plague.

I might try that. Although I will need a longer coxial cable. I just bought a 25ft one today. I was able to try my U-75R out. It works MUCH better than my indoor antenna. I pointed it in the general direction the indoor antenna is pointing in and just layed it on to of my TV and most of my channels are getting 90-93% signal strength. The one channel that fluctated all over the place is now in the 83-87% range and the one channel I could not get over 20% is now 75%. I would imagine those numbers will probably improve once I get the antenna in the attic and mounted.

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