RG6

I was amused to find that my last spool of coaxial cable came with instructions!  Comic at first but it correctly references Article 820-40 of the NEC for grounding specifications and NEC section 810, ANSI/NFPA NO. 70-1996  for mast and outdoor grounding.

The Secret Life of Splitters

Everyone uses splitters. In the 1980s when you bought a second TV (before those damn cable boxes) Dad popped off to the radio shack bought a coaxial splitter and just plugged in the new TV.  Same thing went for the rotor-antenna on the roof. This usually worked just fine. But maybe there was a third TV, or a line out to the garage. Then eventually a line for the computer. Strangely some of these underperformed and without an engineer in the house, the mysterious problem persisted. More on coaxial cable here.

I'll start with the Power Tree. It's a type of diagram that explains the relationships of numbers. Knuth used one in his semi-numerical algorithms.  This will be much simpler.  Though for the record I spent entirely too much time on this diagram.But what you start with is full power, or full power minus loss over distance. Over 150 feet you probably lost about half a dB so I'll call that loss before the splitter "trivial."  This tree illustrates equal power loss across the system. Sometimes it's much worse.

What you get is that after the first split the power is reduced by half, "P2" or approximately 3dB. Decibels are measured logarithmically and so they don't divide in even increments like you might otherwise expect. I'll use round number here for simplicities sake. If you want the exact fractions you can use the calculator here.

The dB is a logarithmic unit used to describe a ratio.  It could be measuring voltage or pressure, loudness, or half a dozen other things which are all related but different. In this case it's voltage. So at the next split we divide the original power by 4 and reduced power by 75%  which is about 6dB that's only "P4."  At "P8" there is almost bupkis left, a reduction of about 9dB. At 10dB there would be about 1% of the initial voltage remaining. Amazingly, frequency modulated signals can survive beyond this point depending on their strength of course.  But this is only if it's an even division in the tree. See the image below.

This is a 8-way splitter. It exactly mirrors the tree. you can actually see the copper threads loop into ferrite beads then in turn be looped into other ferrite beads. The ferrite bead (aka ferrite choke) is not wound with copper thread you see. So it is not a toroid. The reason they use those and not just solder copper to copper is that it effects the impedance matching.  impedance mismatches create loss and as you can see in the power tree.. there is already a lot of loss. More here.

Inside this splitter (above) you can see that the tree isn't always even. Here the output on the right is "P2" but both the center output and the one to the left are both at "P4."  That means that one of the outputs is 25% stronger than the other two. This is significant enough to effect the receiving device, lower volume, color distortion etc. In analog TV it meant snow. Digital TV being more binary would could mean that some channels are entirely missing. These situations are worsened by connecting splitters in a daisy chain, i.e. the out put of one splitter connects to another in turn. the result is loss compounding upon loss. Some signals are very tolerant. You can attenuate FM radio 20dB will very little appreciable loss. Some attenuation is even desirable as it reduces bed noise. But you should not do so unknowingly.  So choose wisely and cable carefully. I exclusively buy Toner splitters myself.

F

I use these constantly. It was invented by Eric Winston at Jerrold Electronics. It was in the in the 1950’s while they were developing cable television. The F connector is a type of RF connector. There's one at each end of the cable connecting your cable box to your television. there's probably another split off and connecting to the cable modem that is proving the Internet access that permits you to read this.

Eric was a mechanical engineer, he has a few dozen coax-related patents for feeder lines, bushings, and other paraphernalia. He worked with Len Ecker an RF engineer. Len's role in the invention is downplayed, but it seems impossible that he was not involved. Today it's a standard for several applications, most commonly for TV signals. The most commonly used are RG6 and RG59. It's cheap, and has a decent 75-ohm impedance match up to 1 GHz. Popular F-connectors today have integrated compression technology and dialectic to reduce water entry, lengthening it's functional life. It's also hard to screw up. Even a novice can learn how to crimp a fitting, and most "mistakes" will not fully obstruct function. More Here.

The reason it's so cheap in terms of comparable connectors is that it uses the center wire of the coaxial cable as the pin of the male connector. That does have a downside. Water entry in that case causes oxidation directly to the center wire increasing resistance. They also make screw on F-connectors that actually thread onto the sheath of the coax. These are for plebeians. Don't use them, it only encourages radio shack to dumb down consumers. More here.
Coaxial cable is much older than cable TV so we can at least rest easy that the F-connector is superior to the C52 fitting it largely replaced.In application, a coaxial cable is stripped to expose a length of the copper center wire, a segment of the dielectric, and a length of the grounding mesh. the mesh should be spread out and then pushed back against the sheath to ensure good grounding. This stripped cable is pushed into the fitting. The copper should protrude just beyond the fitting, the dielectric should fill the void up to but not into the threaded portion. Then crimp, or compress.. whichever fitting it it. I also like to smear a smidgen of dielectric paste into the threads to reduce water entry.

Jerrold Electronics did not invent cable TV. That honor goes to John Walson. They were however pioneers in the cable TV industry. Jerrold was founded in 1950 by Milton Jerrold Shapp. The company was sold to General Instrument in 1967, but Jerrold kept the brand name which he continued to use on hardware into the 1990s. General Instrument merged with Motorola in 1999. More on that here. Shapp became incredibly wealthy on the massive growth of CATV which was due in part to the simple home installation of the F-connector. He was so popular in Pennsylvania he actually parlayed the success of Jerrold into a democratic two runs for governor. He won the second time and served 1971 - 1979. More on that here.