Hi Everyone, we have had a 16' Starcraft for 12 months and are having problems with radio reception being affected by lights in van. Sometimes we have to turn lights on for decent radio reception and sometimes we have to turn them off. Very strange! Anyone else experiencing this problem and do you have a solution? Thanks
Starcraft Radio Interference in Jayco Starcraft
- Thread starter Barbara Brown
- Start date
Welcome to the friendly forum @Barbara Brown. This problem has been discussed here. You may find an answer in this thread.
seen this a few times ..... could improve the problem, but often as not it wouldn't fix it completely, but it's a real bugger.
1/ make sure offending light(s) are on a different supply fuse than radio. we even tried feeding radio straight from battery with inline fuse with mixed results and even tried a different battery at one stage
2/ earth radio body to chassis ..... somewhere
3/ earth inside of antenna to chassis ....... at the same somewhere
4/ replace the offending light(s)
5/ try to tidy up wiring behind stereo to separate antenna lead from other cables
6/ pray one of those works
we noticed it would depend on where you stand/sit in the van as well, so my guess is the antenna is a automotive type that uses the steel car body as a ground plane, mounting the antenna on a fibreglass wall gives you no ground plane, so something we have never tried would be a marine antenna that is designed to be mounted on fibreglass
1/ make sure offending light(s) are on a different supply fuse than radio. we even tried feeding radio straight from battery with inline fuse with mixed results and even tried a different battery at one stage
2/ earth radio body to chassis ..... somewhere
3/ earth inside of antenna to chassis ....... at the same somewhere
4/ replace the offending light(s)
5/ try to tidy up wiring behind stereo to separate antenna lead from other cables
6/ pray one of those works
we noticed it would depend on where you stand/sit in the van as well, so my guess is the antenna is a automotive type that uses the steel car body as a ground plane, mounting the antenna on a fibreglass wall gives you no ground plane, so something we have never tried would be a marine antenna that is designed to be mounted on fibreglass
TV is another kettle of fish entirely ......
number 1 biggest cause of poor signal is the booster. easy check if you can swing a multi meter, turn on booster, get up on the roof with your multimeter, remove the coax terminal from antenna measure across the centre pin of the van side to the outside nut of the cable with DC volts on the multimeter, you should get around 12v or more (centre wire positive), no volts booster is probably cactus ..... or..... some twit at a factory has connected it wrong, test the external feed socket for caravan parks, if you get volts there then it's connected wrong, also check any other outlets. a Splitter upstream from the booster can be a culprit as well. I don't think i've ever seen 2 vans wired the same ........
broken connectors on the back of the booster are another fault, and the one under the wineguard (yes there's one there as well) are a deadset bugger to fix (wineguard base has to come off ..... if your lucky ..)
if your still hunting gremlins with no volts to the antenna, disconnect coax wires on back of booster ( so we don't blow it up!) short the connections together at the antenna (connect centre pin to outside with a piece of wire, go back to booster and test continuity of outside to inside of cable, should be a full tone on the meter or very low resistance
no tone = broken connection somewhere ( hint it's always the last place you look)
I could go on and on .... but it usually comes down to a lot of fault finding and knowing where to look
One other thing .... maybe i should make a post for this seperate, but a handy little app if you have a apple device is "antenna mate" (costs a small fee) but it will show you which way to point the antenna to get a signal ..... worth the purchase ..
number 1 biggest cause of poor signal is the booster. easy check if you can swing a multi meter, turn on booster, get up on the roof with your multimeter, remove the coax terminal from antenna measure across the centre pin of the van side to the outside nut of the cable with DC volts on the multimeter, you should get around 12v or more (centre wire positive), no volts booster is probably cactus ..... or..... some twit at a factory has connected it wrong, test the external feed socket for caravan parks, if you get volts there then it's connected wrong, also check any other outlets. a Splitter upstream from the booster can be a culprit as well. I don't think i've ever seen 2 vans wired the same ........
broken connectors on the back of the booster are another fault, and the one under the wineguard (yes there's one there as well) are a deadset bugger to fix (wineguard base has to come off ..... if your lucky ..)
if your still hunting gremlins with no volts to the antenna, disconnect coax wires on back of booster ( so we don't blow it up!) short the connections together at the antenna (connect centre pin to outside with a piece of wire, go back to booster and test continuity of outside to inside of cable, should be a full tone on the meter or very low resistance
no tone = broken connection somewhere ( hint it's always the last place you look)
I could go on and on .... but it usually comes down to a lot of fault finding and knowing where to look
One other thing .... maybe i should make a post for this seperate, but a handy little app if you have a apple device is "antenna mate" (costs a small fee) but it will show you which way to point the antenna to get a signal ..... worth the purchase ..
you should be fine with the usb's, i've never seen electrical interference on a booster
have seen it on sat systems that run RCA leads, problem disappears with HDMI
I was observing a reduction in reception when I had an iPad charging. Not sure though if it was just coincidence though.
after wasting a few precious brain cells to this I don't think you are not getting interference, but more likely a voltage drop on the circuit, I don't know the specs on your usb ports but if your charging a ipad off them they are over 1amp at least, Think the ipad needs 1.5 to charge) so they may be pulling the volts down which makes the booster suffer. seeing you fitted them yourself you must be pretty comfortable with hacking the wiring around 
so what you can do is remove other things from that circuit on the setek and just dedicating that circuit alone to the booster/usb circuit.
turn on the booster and pull fuses till the light goes out, that will identify the circuit, then look at the terminals for that circuit on the top of the setek (may need to remove it .... beware they bite on 240AC input) if there are multiple wires on this circuit you can cut the lugs off and move them to another circuit that can handle the load thus eliminating volt drop to your booster ..... or fit heavier wires .... or wire the usb's to another circuit ....
have fun, but please be careful pulling front cover off setek, it has 240AC behind there and has bit me a few times when i go to push the unit back in without taken care ....... now i'm careful and get someone else to push it home
so what you can do is remove other things from that circuit on the setek and just dedicating that circuit alone to the booster/usb circuit.
turn on the booster and pull fuses till the light goes out, that will identify the circuit, then look at the terminals for that circuit on the top of the setek (may need to remove it .... beware they bite on 240AC input) if there are multiple wires on this circuit you can cut the lugs off and move them to another circuit that can handle the load thus eliminating volt drop to your booster ..... or fit heavier wires .... or wire the usb's to another circuit ....
have fun, but please be careful pulling front cover off setek, it has 240AC behind there and has bit me a few times when i go to push the unit back in without taken care ....... now i'm careful and get someone else to push it home