Trying to recognize which cable is connected to a dish

[Martin I]

Hi

I moved to an apartment building with 7 apartments and 9 DirecTV dish antennas on the roof. I was told that one antenna is for my department but I can not know for sure if the cable that reaches my floor is the one connected to some antenna.

Is there any way with a multi meter to find out if the cable is actually getting some signal from the dish?
Any ideas.

Regards

 

[bmetelsky]

Are you paying for DirecTv service?

 

[Claude Greiner]

Either trace the wire from your unit to the roof, or connect up a receiver and see what happens.

Either that or a $500 Directv aim meter would say its active.

If you went on eBay and bought a d12 (which cannot be activated) that would also work

 

[slice1900]

Wow, what a mess. Imagine the fun an installer would have if they need it fixed and they have to figure out which dish is which!

 

[Claude Greiner]

Sometimes a fox and a hound like they use for telephone and cat5 will work for coax.

 

[Jimbo]

Wow, what a mess. Imagine the fun an installer would have if they need it fixed and they have to figure out which dish is which!

People that work in the business have tone tracers for that type of thing.

I have them for wiring, but not coax ...

I could rig it up to work, but they have a tool that does that.

 

[raoul5788]

to Satelliteguys Martin I!

 

[raoul5788]

This is what I use to trace cables.

 

[Martin I]

Thanks for the answers.
1) Are you paying for DirecTv service? Yes, but I have the "install it your own" kit that I can take from one home to another.
2) The tone tracer looks like a good idea. I'm checking for it online.
3) Sperry Wire Tracker also looks good.

I'm thinking about some thing else, if I can convince the building management, do you think it can be good to only have one DirecTV dish for the building (7 floors high), with some signal booster/splitters to serve all the departments.
What do you think? do you have any experience with those boosters ? Any model you recommend?

Regards

 

[Jimbo]

I'm floored that they don't have an MDU set up already ...

Try something like this:

InstallMates 8-Way Color-Coded Indicator Coax Mapper (NSM1280) from Solid Signal