Electroline Multicoupler

[prcguy]

I had all AGC off, as far as I could tell, and the manual gain level pretty high. All settings the same in both pictures. I played around with the gains, but it had little effect to make it sound any better. I should also say my whole set up is in a pretty RF noisy area: laptop, extra monitor, USB sound card, mini sound mixer, desktop speakers, scanner, SDR, all plugged into a nearby big power strip with about a half dozen transformer plugs on it.


Yeah, I knew they're for CATV, just trying to save a buck over the Stridsberg I was looking at. I read that many people have had luck with the Electrolines, so I decided to give it a try. I may end up getting the Stridsberg in the end, and the rest is a lesson learned.

If you have a lot of high level signals in your area from paging (do they still do that?) TV/FM broadcast, cell towers, etc, you might be better off buying the individual LNA and splitter parts and making your own. The low noise amplifiers in Stridsberg multicouplers are not that great by today’s standards with mediocre noise figure and IP1/IP3 specs.

 

[acj76]

If you have a lot of high level signals in your area

I probably do have a lot since there's a tower about a mile and a half from me that carries the county P25. It's in direct line of sight with my discone on the roof. I receive that no problem with zero antenna, but I like finding distant analog stuff too. I started looking into LNA/splitter a while ago, I'll revisit that. I'd just be splitting between the scanner and the SDR for now, but I want to set myself up for future expansions for at least one more SDR. Thanks for the advice.

 

[dave3825]

Yeah, I knew they're for CATV,

I read that many people have had luck with the Electrolines,

I have an 8 port and do not experience the elevated noise floor. What are you using for a power source?

 

[Ubbe]

I looked at the specs for the 2802 and they measure it at a 10dBmV level which is -38dBm and the distorsion level are then at a -100dBm level. Any higher input signals and it goes worse. It has a high 5dB internal noise figure. As prcguy mentions it seems to not handle big signals very well with that kind of specs. It needs out of band signals like FM broadcast and TV to be filtered out but probably also cellular if a tower are too close. If you are lucky and input levels at any frequency are below -40dBm then it probably works fine. It's about the same specs as a Stridsberg multicoupler that also breaks down at around -40dBm levels.

/Ubbe

 

[acj76]

I have an 8 port and do not experience the elevated noise floor. What are you using for a power source?

It's an Electroline 15V, 300mA power supply.

 

[acj76]

I looked at the specs for the 2802

Thanks for looking further into it. The numbers are a bit over my head, but I think I get the gist of what you're saying. Would I be running into the same issues using something like a Noelec Lana? And how many scanners/SDRs can I hook up to it before the signal is worse than not splitting the antenna?

 

[mancow]

The pulsing noise floor is present at my location. From what I can tell it's a result of cellular towers.

 

[dave3825]

I have the same power supply. I do not get pulsating noise floor. You could have noisy stuff in your house. A 12 years back I was getting some nastiness so I started shutting breakers off one by one and after the third one, nasty went away. Tracked it down to the baby monitor in the kids room. I will try to mimic your pics later and lock on a signal with and without my 8 port. I believe I did that once before and did not notice a difference.

 

[rgchristy]

If the offer from @prcguy is still on the table, you might be a perfect candidate especially before spending any more money:

Yet Another Multicoupler Thread

This spring I plan a revamp of my tower mounted antennas. In advance of that, based on a lot of info gathered from RR, combined with the apparent unfortunately slowdown at Stridsberg Engineering, I've decided that going forward I'm going to build my own multicouplers. As has been hashed and...

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