Extending Sky+ cable?

unclelonghair · 4 Jul 2006 at 20:34

In the middle of reshuffling my room abut so I can fit a plasma in, and have discovered the cable for my Sky+ is about 6 inches shorter that I would like for ideal placement.

Is there an easy way to extend the cable, or will I have to get Sky out to replace it?

Jez · 4 Jul 2006 at 21:44

Buy another bit of coax and twist them together? Ive got a fair few joins in mine and its fine.

carpmaster · 5 Jul 2006 at 11:35

Jez said:
Buy another bit of coax and twist them together?

Christ no. Just get a few F connectors and a small length of decent cable and extend away.

[DOD]Asprilla · 5 Jul 2006 at 14:59

carpmaster said:
Christ no. Just get a few F connectors and a small length of decent cable and extend away.

I'm going to be doing this in a few weeks for the same reasons, so what sort of cable do they actually use?

(I know nothing about cabling and Sky+ other than how to use the remote)

carpmaster · 5 Jul 2006 at 15:37

H109F / WF100 or WF100 twin. Any decent copper on copper cable will be fine.

unclelonghair · 5 Jul 2006 at 17:18

In the end my friendly neighbourhood satellite shop made me up a couple of extension pieces of coax cable, with all the necessary connectors, which is working fine

Jez · 5 Jul 2006 at 19:08

carpmaster said:
Christ no. Just get a few F connectors and a small length of decent cable and extend away.

One join will not affect the signal. I have a few around my system and its fine.

carpmaster · 6 Jul 2006 at 09:41

Jez said:
One join will not affect the signal. I have a few around my system and its fine.

If it's done properly then a join won't usually cause any problems. Your method however of twisting the wires together is a definate no no.

Jez · 6 Jul 2006 at 19:12

Why is it, out of interest, seeing as it doesnt affect the signal?

carpmaster · 6 Jul 2006 at 19:39

The whole point is that it does affect the signal. Your Sky box may look like it's getting the same signal but it isn't.

A taped joint will radiate and pickup RF and cause an impedence mismatch which may cause standing waves to form. All this plays havoc with the BER (Bit Error Rate). Pixelation will occur when this happens.

Remember that a minidish was desgined to be as small as Sky could possibly get away with (for economic reasons naturally), and as such most domestic users only have a borderline signal at best. There's not much allowance for rain fade margin or heavy snow etc. Testing a working domestic system usually reports back a poor BER, so there is a lot of reliance on error correction.

And remember that two F connectors, and a F barrel cost about 30p all in, so there's really no excuse for twisting the wires together.

Jez · 6 Jul 2006 at 19:41

I dont need to be patronised

It doesnt affect my signal at all, but i spose if you can be bothered to get the parts then it may as well be done properly.

carpmaster · 6 Jul 2006 at 21:23

Jez said:
I dont need to be patronised

It doesnt affect my signal at all, but i spose if you can be bothered to get the parts then it may as well be done properly.

I bet you don't need to be patronised. That is unless you've got lots of tables empty and lots of chefs doing nothing in the kitchen.

To answer your reply though, it wasn't my intention to be patronising. I wanted to explain to you how important it is to do things properly. It certainly is affecting your signal, but you appear to have suffered no consequences as yet. Remember you did ask the question why it was so important which is the whole reason for my post.