Took me 3 hours to fix a drop amp that was just a bad ground

I got a call last Tuesday for a customer in Arlington who kept losing channels on their main TV. Checked the tap, the drop, the ground block, even swapped the modem. Signal levels looked perfect on my meter but the amp kept cutting out. Turns out the ground rod clamp had corroded so bad it was barely making contact. After I replaced that clamp and re-tightened everything, it worked first try. Has anyone else chased a ghost like that and found it was something dumb at the grounding point?

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gray_morgan1mo ago

Used to be the first thing I checked, ground block and all that, and then I'd move on if it looked okay from the outside. This post kinda opened my eyes though because I've had damn near the same issue on a commercial job once, the clamp looked fine but the wire inside was green and crusty. Replaced it and everything just worked, felt like an idiot for the two hours I spent swapping splitters and blaming the line. Now I always take the clamp apart and inspect the actual metal to metal contact before I do anything else. It's crazy how something so simple can mess with your whole system like that, but it makes sense when you think about how everything relies on that one point.

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