Grounding = no channels?

Cleaning up my installation now that everything is working, grounded the antenna and the cable. Antenna is fine, but when I grounded the cable I lost everything - not a single channel comes through. Removed the ground wire and everything’s back to normal. The connector block didn’t change, just adding/removing the ground wire.

Does this make any sense?

Is there a different way to ground it, or a way around the problem?

You didn’t actually explain how you grounded it. Copper rod pounded into the ground? Water pipe? Connecting to your electric service’s ground?

Copper grounding rod that was there from the days before cable TV. It is what the antenna that was there when we moved in was grounded to.

How is the ground conductor on the antenna end attached? From the symptoms it sounds like you have a path to ground of the center conductor.

I used something that looks like this:

That should work. Do you have a multimeter? Check for continuity between the center conductor and shield. It should show as open when not connected to the antenna and TV/Tablo. And OR put a 75 ohm terminator on one end and make sure it reads 75 ohms.

Can do that (later this week), if there is a short between the center conductor and the shield, why would everything work without the grounding wire? I would think a should would stop it from working all the time.

Yep its a puzzle. Are both the coax and antenna grounded at the same point? Good ground connection for both no corrosion? What are they connected to? You want to avoid creating ground loop. The 75 ohm terminator with and with out ground will be a good test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aey9rCC5Gs

Ok, I see your coax grounding block, now one more… do you have an amplified - something?
That is do you have a power inserter in your coax from power source to amp - and you’re inserting this ground in the middle of the power line?

[ power inserter is a line of coax connecting to a power supply, or maybe a USB connection on a block near the end of the cable run… or any electrical connection to/from your coax ]

Yep, that’s the setup I used, except that my grounding wire is bare copper, not insulated.

nope. Signal is fine without any amps.

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Since it works with the grounding wire disconnected, there must be something that is “grounding” the center conductor somewhere else. Try this - connect a TV with a cable directly to the grounding block and try it. This will tell you it is good from the grounding block to the antenna. If it doesn’t work, it is likely something from the grounding block to the antenna. It could be a defective cable.

The best way to troubleshoot is to eliminate variables and test with the shortest circuit.

As suggested I decided to try checking the resistance on the cables, they both tested good (no short). I replaced the grounding block with a standard inline connector and grounded that by attaching the grounding wire to the nuts on the cable. I tested that the ground was good throughout the cables, then went to the Tablo and did a scan, all of the channels work. Apparently the grounding block was the issue, unfortunately I can’t find a grounding block anywhere in my area (Lowes, HD, BestBuy, ACE, etc.) so I’m going to leave the setup as-is until I can find a new grounding block.

Thanks everyone.

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My local Menards has grounding blocks on hand. Surprisingly other “like” stores in my area don’t sell them.

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