Should aerial cable be earthed?

[Alandw]

Hi,

Just wondering if aerial cable should be earthed or not, and if so how?. I use a splitter and when switching connections I often get a small electric shock. I am not sure if this is coming from the equipment or is just generally present in the aerial cable.

I see that some of the better metal splitter blocks include an earthing terminal. Does this earth the aerial itself or just the block?

Any ideas?

Alandw

 

[stuartsjg]

There is an aerial law that never gets a look at that says that all antanna should be earthed. That is every aerial and sky dish should have a ground lead from it to a burried plate in the ground. This is for lightenening protection.

The small shock could be static but you do find that sometimes boosters, masthead amps etc. all get a bit of mains on them. This is not harmfull but can be destressing.

TV's also can throw on some mains due to the grouded chassis within them.

What ive done is using a mettal splitter, wedged it in with a radiator pipe. Not sure if ot helps but it may help should there be lighteneing.

Basic answer is NO, cable doesent need to be earthed.
A bit more on that is that the aerial and mast should be... but ive never seen one with domestic applications.

Stuart.

 

[Alandw]

Thanks for that info -looks like I need not bother with earthing.

I recently tried a piece of aerial extension with ferrite beads on and this has improved my TV picture considerably (much less noise) so it looks as though there was some kind EMI going on in the cable (which unfortunately due to my arrangement needs to be quite long), which could have been producing static etc.

I also found that holding the aerial connector and touching the VCR case also produces small electric shocks, so there is something going on. Probably my VCR is not earthed properly.

I now intend to replace all my equipment cable links with EMI suppressed ones and hopefully this will kill off the EMI and improve picture quality some more.

Cheers Alan