I know the zBoost YX545 works. Now I have to mount it. In part 3, I proved that mounting the antenna made a big difference. The problem is, I don’t want to go up into the attic to run the wire. I know that Wi-Ex sells a window cable that would let me snake the wire out a window, but my window faces the street. I want a fairly clean installation.
I remembered that there was some coaxial cable in the spare room. I had cable TV in there in the 1990s. My thought was, use that existing cable and connect one end to the antenna and one end to the YX545. It should work. So, out I went to find the splitter for that piece of coax.
It took some WD40 and a couple of wrenches but I was able to disconnect that old cable from its splitter. This was looking like an easy project. I used a “barrel” connector and another old piece of coax to extend the wire beyond the eave for a temporary installation.
The wind was whipping up and I knew this temporary installation wasn’t going to last long so I high-tailed it back into the house to connect the other end. I simply pulled the coaxial cable out of the closet and connected it. Once again, I knew this was all temporary so I looked for a good place to put the YX545.
I hooked everything up, I powered up the YX545, and…
What did I do wrong? I tested out the YX545 in the house and it worked. I know my extension cable was good. That means there was probably a cut in the cable in the attic. That’s possible, it’s been there a long time. Or, it wasn’t the cable I thought it was. That’s possible too. All I know is that if I’m going up the attic, it will be to run a new antenna cable, and I really don’t care what happened to that old coax cable.
So… on to part 5. My 30 days with the YX545 is almost up, so I guess I had better get up the courage to go up in the attic. I had better be careful up there.
There are a lot of old rusty nails up there. This is going to be fun.
