50 inch Legion

Some of you may think I am smoking something but this story is true. We were watching TV while doing our shakedown and found that this tv would pixilate? like a satellite feed when it rains heavily, whenever we turned any of the rear lights on. Turn them off and the picture is perfect. Next while the furnace was running the DVD we were watching turned from color to black and white and back again when the furnace kicked off. Lastly, when my better half was testing the central vac, the picture turned blue until she shut it off. The tv worked fine with the microwave being used and with all of the main lights on. Is there some kind of filter I can use at the plug in to stop this? Any help or ideas are appreciated.

Ghettomedic said:

Some of you may think I am smoking something but this story is true. We were watching TV while doing our shakedown and found that this tv would pixilate? like a satellite feed when it rains heavily, whenever we turned any of the rear lights on. Turn them off and the picture is perfect. Next while the furnace was running the DVD we were watching turned from color to black and white and back again when the furnace kicked off. Lastly, when my better half was testing the central vac, the picture turned blue until she shut it off. The tv worked fine with the microwave being used and with all of the main lights on. Is there some kind of filter I can use at the plug in to stop this? Any help or ideas are appreciated.

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this is not normal. Is it possible the feed line is shorted to a ground on the rig somewhere?

I hope not. I am ok tech wise with electric, but would not know where to start looking. Maybe a warranty item. I was thinking it might be the tv as the one in the bedroom is not acting the same way.

Sounds like the TV is sensitive to electrical noise. You might need a new TV, but it's possible a ferrite core noise suppressor might get rid of the problem. Here's a link.

I think you either have a bad coax connector installation (shield not grounded because it was cut too far back) or a cut in the plastic jacket allowing the shield wire to contact metal. My bet would be the first scenario.

We have had a similar problem with our bedroom TV in our BH. When the bathroom fan is on, the bedroom tv has snowy reception, but once the fan is off, everything is normal. There is no apparent interference with the living room TV. It is only a minor issue, and we are not concerned enough to do anything about it at present. My thought was that the coax in the ceiling ran alongside the bathroom fan electrical, causing some interference, but I don't really know.

I agree with Rex, the coax probably has been compromised or is improperly installed. Trace

Thank you for the responses. I will look into everyone's ideas until it is fixed.

Does this sound familiar? I copied it from a Ham Radio forum discussion.

"In the RV world where some of the LED BOARDs for incandescent light bulb replacements like to use the BUCK regulator chips for making the boards deal with a large DC voltage range of 9V to 30V... Most of these are known to really produce a lot of RFI in the VHF/UHF frequency range so bad it will blank a digital HDTV set when you turn them on..."

I had a SOB that when the bathroom light was turned on the TV blanked. The coax feed ran beside the bathroom from the antenna and picked up enough RFI to kill the TV. Of course having the antenna right beside the bathroom didn't help. Nothing else in the trailer affected it.

Bones said:

this is not normal. Is it possible the feed line is shorted to a ground on the rig somewhere?

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This was my first thought also.

In both our previous Heartland Trail Runner and new Heartland Prowler, if we had the built-in stereo playing AM or FM radio, when either of the TV's were turned on the radio would loose the station.

The Trail Runner had a diapole antenna hooked up, but the Prowler was (notice I said "was") plugged into the coax that runs to the roof antenna!

We were having issues getting the cable TV to work in the Prowler, and as it turned out, the built-in stereo was shorting out the coax . . . so we no longer have radio reception in the Prowler.

It is at the dealership right now getting several warranty issues resolved, and hopefully they will come up with a solution for this.

I'm hoping that maybe they will install an external antenna for the stereo.