First job today was a problem with too much signal, yes it’s just as bad as not having enough! Obviously something common to the aerial because all three tv’s in the house were breaking up. Measuring the signal I could see plenty of strength but only around 50% quality, that usually tells me there’s something being over amplified, especially as this was in a good reception area of Minehead. So up in the loft and measuring the signal directly off the aerial I had 100% signal quality, the problem was the amplifier, not that there was anything wrong with it, it simply wasn’t needed as it was increasing the signal strength to a point where the signal quality was being destroyed. Out came the amp and in went a three way splitter, this gave perfect results on all three tv’s but it’s sometimes difficult to explain to someone why too much signal is a bad thing.

Then a couple of easy ones, a quick press of a button to adjust the aspect ratio for one old couple, then up the road a bit to reboot a vision distribution amp, my customer had been messing with the sky remote eyes, this had briefly shorted out the respective outputs on the amp meaning they went into protection mode and removed the dc voltage to the eyes, switching it off and back on at the mains sorted it out.

Then out to williton to check another distribution amp, this one had definitely failed and needed replacement. The customer told me they had approached a company they found online and been quoted £60 to call out and a further £220 to do the job, imagine their shock when I did the whole thing for less than the other company’s call out! This is why I always say to go local..if not me then Exmoor Aerials do a very good job.

Out to Luxborough for the next one, poor connections on a satellite dish, the installer hadn’t even bothered to pull the waterproof cover down on the LNB. Last job was out in Wooten Courtenay, one aerial socket not working in a bedroom, everything else fine, that should have been easy enough just to pop up in the loft and connect it to the rest of the system, it didn’t work like that though! The loftspace had been converted into a room and there was just a crawl space around the edge of the loft, it was cramped and very difficult to move around in but I thought I’d cracked it when I found three leads coiled up and not connected to the very old amp, one by one I plugged them in but none of them worked, there had to be another one somewhere, the trouble was the bedroom was on the other side of the bungalow to where the amp was. So I set off crawling through the tight space, right around the back of the conversion and across to the other side of the bungalow, it was difficult to keep my bearings as to where the bedroom was, I knew it was near the dormer window and once I’d found the framework for that I knew I was in the right area. Before long I found two aerial leads going down through a joist, they were both coiled up nearby and after a bit more crawling I was back at the amp and the correct lead was soon connected. I emerged from the crawl space covered in fibreglass but very relieved.

I did quite a few miles out in the sticks today, from Luxborough I took the road down past Nutcombe Bottom towards Dunster and then to Wooten Courtenay, it was a nice day for a drive though. Sadly I came across a dead Grass Snake in Roadwater, it was freshly run over and very beautiful, about two feet long, I saw it dead in the road from about 100 yards so how someone can manage to run a snake over is beyond me, such a shame as they are becoming very rare.