RG6 Coax

Sorry for delay in updating. Found our problem was more than likely the addition of splitter in the "satellite in" coax. As the access to this coax was very tight and required a much more agile person to explore cabling, we drilled a hole in media area and ran coax direct from Tailgater to Receiver and will just pull the cabling inside when traveling. All is well and, during this process, we even determined how to connect DVD player via tv and receiver.... Thanks for all your help.

I ran the coax to a nearby storage locker and installed a barrel connector. So no cable to route through the rig and there is no reason for the sat cable connector to be in the back of the rig.

Bill.Satellite wrote:
Whether the coax in the fiver is RG6 or RG59 you should have success and I would not be concerned about what's inside.

RG59 is NOT recommended for satellite use. It is not the same as RG59.
It has a smaller center conductor, dielectric insulator, and outer shield, its signal quality is not as good as that coming from the RG6 (even if it still delivers acceptable performance for CATV). Plus, the RG59 does not have a foil shield, thus rendering it useless for satellite feeds or cable installations, and totally rules it out from reaching the GHz-level signals that the RG6 is capable of.

You will find no noticeable difference in signal quality at the satellite receiver with a short run of RG59 or RG6. It's simply not an issue. If you want to run 50+ feet you may see a slight drop in signal (still not likely enough to make a difference). If you want the best quality cable, then use RG6 but if your coach has internal RG59 you can use it without a second thought.

Bill.Satellite wrote:
You will find no noticeable difference in signal quality at the satellite receiver with a short run of RG59 or RG6. It's simply not an issue. If you want to run 50+ feet you may see a slight drop in signal (still not likely enough to make a difference). If you want the best quality cable, then use RG6 but if your coach has internal RG59 you can use it without a second thought.

In my 15 years as a custom AV installer I have found problems caused countless times from a customer trying to hook up some of their own equipment and simply replacing a RG 59 cable as short as 6'. Especially when they use low quality premade cables (Radio Shack or Walmart variety). Will it work? Yes, sometimes. Is it just as easy to avoid it altogether to eliminate that possible issue? Absolutely.

soundslikefun wrote:

Bill.Satellite wrote:
You will find no noticeable difference in signal quality at the satellite receiver with a short run of RG59 or RG6. It's simply not an issue. If you want to run 50+ feet you may see a slight drop in signal (still not likely enough to make a difference). If you want the best quality cable, then use RG6 but if your coach has internal RG59 you can use it without a second thought.

In my 15 years as a custom AV installer I have found problems caused countless times from a customer trying to hook up some of their own equipment and simply replacing a RG 59 cable as short as 6'. Especially when they use low quality premade cables (Radio Shack or Walmart variety). Will it work? Yes, sometimes. Is it just as easy to avoid it altogether to eliminate that possible issue? Absolutely.

Terminating both ends with a compression connector usually clears up any problem.

soundslikefun wrote:

Bill.Satellite wrote:
You will find no noticeable difference in signal quality at the satellite receiver with a short run of RG59 or RG6. It's simply not an issue. If you want to run 50+ feet you may see a slight drop in signal (still not likely enough to make a difference). If you want the best quality cable, then use RG6 but if your coach has internal RG59 you can use it without a second thought.

In my 15 years as a custom AV installer I have found problems caused countless times from a customer trying to hook up some of their own equipment and simply replacing a RG 59 cable as short as 6'. Especially when they use low quality premade cables (Radio Shack or Walmart variety). Will it work? Yes, sometimes. Is it just as easy to avoid it altogether to eliminate that possible issue? Absolutely.

In 12 years of selling, installing and setting up satellite TV systems in RV's I have never found good RG59 cabling in an RV to be an issue of any kind. I always installed RG6 on a new roof mounted installation (unless the manufacturer provided a satellite pre-wire) but many installations are portables and the user wants to use the existing cable connection (or separate external satellite connection). In this case, I have never found the existing cabling to be an issue and long as you verified the continuity of the cabling and provided very good connections at each end.
Even Dish Network says that when setting up their Hopper and Joey systems the runs from the Solo Node through their splitter and up to 3 Joey's can all be done with RG59 coax.

FYI

We recently upgraded to a DTV HR44 receiver which meant changing from a multiswitch to SWM. The installer indicated that our 8 year old black RG6 coax installed by DTV was good for many more years and that the new white coax that DTV now uses doesn’t last as long in the sun. He said our PCT-DRS-6 compression fittings did not always make good contact with the coax shield and replaced all of them with the L1RC SMS Ultimate which has a red cap. He also replaced the barrel connectors with a HF-81 with a yellow insert. These changes were for the purpose of longer term reliability and the higher frequency demands of SWM.

Bill.Satellite wrote:

soundslikefun wrote:

Bill.Satellite wrote:
You will find no noticeable difference in signal quality at the satellite receiver with a short run of RG59 or RG6. It's simply not an issue. If you want to run 50+ feet you may see a slight drop in signal (still not likely enough to make a difference). If you want the best quality cable, then use RG6 but if your coach has internal RG59 you can use it without a second thought.

In my 15 years as a custom AV installer I have found problems caused countless times from a customer trying to hook up some of their own equipment and simply replacing a RG 59 cable as short as 6'. Especially when they use low quality premade cables (Radio Shack or Walmart variety). Will it work? Yes, sometimes. Is it just as easy to avoid it altogether to eliminate that possible issue? Absolutely.

In 12 years of selling, installing and setting up satellite TV systems in RV's I have never found good RG59 cabling in an RV to be an issue of any kind. I always installed RG6 on a new roof mounted installation (unless the manufacturer provided a satellite pre-wire) but many installations are portables and the user wants to use the existing cable connection (or separate external satellite connection). In this case, I have never found the existing cabling to be an issue and long as you verified the continuity of the cabling and provided very good connections at each end.
Even Dish Network says that when setting up their Hopper and Joey systems the runs from the Solo Node through their splitter and up to 3 Joey's can all be done with RG59 coax.

If we actually take a look at some facts, it's pretty easy to see that the performance of RG59 really isn't so bad in the 1.5-2.0 GHz range that is needed to get the signal from the LNB to the receiver. This calculator permits you to compute the line loss as a function of frequency for any length of coax: Coax loss calculator I think part of the confusion may result from some people thinking that the coax has to transmit the Ku and Ka band signals to the receiver. It doesn't; the LNB downconverts those to the 1.5-2.0 GHz range.

Forty feet (one motorhome length) of RG59/U produces a 4.67dB loss compared with the 3.74dB loss in the same length of RG6/U. For most installations that's not going to make the difference between success and failure. In my experience the weak link is usually cheap connectors, poorly attached, rather than the cable itself.

There is one important note that should be added. While the Joey's associated with a Hopper can run on RG59, the Hopper "claims" to require 3GHz coax. That would require very good RG6 between the antenna and Hopper. However, my personal feeling is that good 2GHz RG6 with proper connections on a short run as would be found in an RV would also work just fine.