CATV Feeder Lines

CATV Feeder Lines

The Asheville City Government TV department had a weak signal coming in from their Charter TV service.  The existing Charter Demarcation point was in the City Hall garage, and the signal was fed to the 2nd floor IDF by two RG-6 cables.  In the IDF, the RG-6 cables terminated on to separate splitter/amplifiers from where they fed the rest of the building.

The signal was weak when it entered the building, and there was significant DB loss through the cable feeding the 2nd-floor splitters.  Charter agreed to provide a new Demarcation point in the City Hall Computer and phone room where it terminated on an eight-way splitter.

The city IT department decided to utilize the new incoming feed and run an RG-11 cable up to Third floor IDF.  On the third floor, the signal was then split and continued back down to the second floor IDF, once again using the RG-11.  Both RG-6 and RG-11 are 75 Ohm cables, but the RG-11 cable has a 14 AWG center conductor that transports the signal with less loss.  RG-6 only has an 18 AWG center conductor while RG-59 is even smaller at 20 AWG.

We chose the Commscope F1160BVR cable for this application because of its riser rating, copper-clad steel conductor, and the double shielding provided.

 http://docs.commscope.com/Public/F1160BVR.pdf

The connector we chose was a Thomas & Betts LRC SNS11AS connector.

http://www.tnb.com/ps/fulltilt/index.cgi?part=SNS11AS

The installation tool was another Thomas & Betts product, the snap and seal termination tool: L3011B

http://www.tnb.com/ps/fulltilt/index.cgi?part=L3011B

On the 3rd floor, we needed to provide a two-way splitter for the incoming feeder cable.  Our choice was a Blonder Tongue indoor 5-1000 MHz splitter. The City Hall representative was able to test the new installation and the signal gain was over 5 Db which was more than a 40% improvement!  The upgraded installation was considered a success.