Had a similar issue and it turned out to be the first aerial lead that went from the connection on the roof to the first junction on the aerial. The fittings had corroded
A new lead fixed the problem
Those aerials have a built-in amplifier to which 12V is supplied via the coax. I suspect the spark you see is due to there being a short in either the cable or the antenna. You can easily test the cable with an ohm meter and if you also use the ohm meter to measure the resistance of the antenna/amplifier you should see a reading of anything between 100k to 3M - you should not see a short.
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"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell, 3rd August 1650 - in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland
Hi Mike, Thats my concern, if the fault is related to the amplifier. A tv is easy to replace. Not so the arial. I guess somehow the short could also come from the tv internally? We noticed last week that the inbuilt Dvd would not work unless the arial was plugged into the tv? Any idea?
If i buy a cheapo mulitmeter how should i test the arial?
-- Edited by oldbloke on Tuesday 13th of August 2019 08:27:41 AM
There's a good chance you zapped something with a fair static charge if your antenna, mount and lead were on high winds.
Does the TV display anything (menu etc) ? Is the DVD connected to anything else but TV and power ?
We were told to always fit the antenna plug and power plug to the tv before turning on the power. I ignored that advice a couple of tmes and each time blew the power supply fuse.
