Saw a coax connector go from -12 dBmV to -2 dBmV after one simple fix, and it took me 3 years to figure out

Lee Hall · 2026-10-11T06:45:05.181993+00:00

I was at a house in Fort Worth last Tuesday and the modem kept dropping. The signal at the wall plate was -12 dBmV, which is bad. I pulled the plate and found the installer before me had left a 6 inch loop of coax crammed behind the drywall. That tight bend was crushing the dielectric and the shield. I trimmed the loop, put on a new compression fitting, and the reading jumped to -2 dBmV in about 10 seconds. Same cable, same splitter, same everything else. So now I'm wondering how many of my trouble calls are just a bad loop or a kinked bend hidden behind the wall. Has anyone else seen that kind of swing from just fixing the cable path?

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Saw a coax connector go from -12 dBmV to -2 dBmV after one simple fix, and it took me 3 years to figure out | Cable Installers - Free To Speak