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How Many Feet of Cable Do I Need to Hook Up My RV To Cable TV at an RV Park?

by Bonnie
(Sacramento, ca)

What length of coaxial cable is needed to connect a motorhome to the RV park cable TV connection?

ANSWER: Hi Bonnie, this question would be quite easy for me to answer if RV Parks and Resorts were required to put all their hookups in the same place, but they are not required to do that.

A lot of the campgrounds and RV Parks we have stayed at have the cable TV connection right at the electrical box, and it is clearly marked and identifiable. At other parks and campgrounds, we have stayed at, I start to play; let's find the TV cable right after hooking everything else up.

At some RV parks who have recently installed cable, you may find the cable connection way at the front or the rear of the RV space so they could save money by not having to run the cable all the way to the electrical box.

At one RV Campground we went to recently, I spent 10 minutes trying to find the cable connection and finally, out of frustration, went to the office to get a hint from them on where to look. One of the people at the office came back to the campsite with me, and it took him 15 minutes to find the cable connection, which was just a piece of cable buried in the grass.

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Coax Cable Connectors
OK now that I am done ranting about this; here is what I do. Personally I carry a 25 foot coaxial cable that is permanently attached to the cable connection on my motorhome. I also carry an additional 20-foot section of Coax cable with a Coax Cable Connector (Pictured Above) so I can attach it to the main cable to make it longer and yes on several occasions I have had to use the additional piece of cable to reach the connection.

OK, now I know you're asking yourself, why don't you use one 45-foot piece of cable instead of two separate pieces of cable. The reason is the longer the cable run is, the more degraded the signal coming through the cable will become. If you have a digital TV that means that if the signal is too degraded, you may not get some channels. If you still have an analog TV, you may get snow and smearing of the picture.

The shorter the cable runs, the better chance you have of getting a decent picture. Unfortunately, most RV Parks and Campgrounds do not have great signal strength at their cable connections.

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The Ultimate Solution
If you really don't want to deal with hooking up the TV cable to your RV every time you go to a new Campground, the ultimate solution is to use a TV Satellite Dish. A satellite system will allow you to watch TV regardless of where you're camping.

I certainly hope that this answers your question.

Happy RVing

RVing Al

Over 1,500,000 successful roadside rescues—Good Sam RV Emergency Road Service

LEARN HOW TO RUN 2 RV A/Cs ON A 30 AMP CONNECTION

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