Tv and Radio Aerials...

I can see why some people take a long time to complete their builds.  Working in a small space requires way more self disciple and organisation than I have...  I'm learning but it's a slow process...

Calling in on route home from work is more difficult when it's cold and dark .  I'm running the engine for an hour or so to have the electric fire on which does take the chill off it but the sooner I can coax Simon the webasto man into fitting the heater, the better.  He's not returning my calls at the moment so I may resort to collecting the unit and doing it myself!

Bearing in mind the aforementioned difficulty, I wanted an easy win so have drilled yet MORE holes in the roof and erected a combined tv/radio aerial.  I don't know if it's MEANT to be combined but it did say on the box for fm/dab and tv signals...

I've heard mixed reports about them but lots of boats on our mooring have them so  figured they MUST at least work "here"...

Given the boat has the wires already in for 3 tvs and 3 radios, rather than having multiple wires going up though the roof, I thought I'd try just having the 1 and splitting it.  As look would have it, I found these handy little boxes on ebay and also discovered - (quite by chance) the aerial kit included a signal booster (12v) which had 1 input and 2 outputs... perfect.

The wire from it passes through the centre of it into the wardrobe in the front bedroom - I've drilled a large hole and filled it with more sikaflex - that stuff is addictive!

It looks a bit messy busy, but I'll tidy it up with cable ties at some point...  KEEN to test if it worked or not, I then decided to wire in a radio at the back of the boat.  That turned out to be a bit of a faff because the 12v feed for it turned out to be omitted so I had to take a new feed for it.... temporarily I rigged up a cable from the one on the other side of the boat

Anyway - it works and the signal is fine...  I'll wire it in "properly" tomorrow night.

Until next time...