I purchased a Talking House 5.0 transmitter along with its companion ATU a couple months ago. I'm using a 102" steel antenna whip and 100 feet of RCA RG-6 coaxial cable, but I can't seem to get a reading on the ATU.
I had it downstairs in the basement with the mast resting on a copper water pipe and got a slight reading, but not when it's mounted to my roof, about 15 feet above ground. According to the instructions, Talking House supplied 100 feet of coax cable with the setup, and for the excess length, to coil it up, and not cut it.
I tried to ground it to the lightning rod outside my house and to its mounting hardware, but still no reading and no signal. What is it that I'm doing wrong here?
Is the red indicator on the front of the Talking House for the "Remote Ant in use when lit" on?
If not, there is a switch on the back of the unit to select the remote antenna jack.
2nd question: Is the RG-6 connected to the "F" connector?
If yes to both of these questions is the band select switch on the ATU set for the right frequency range?
If yes, did you run the ATU tuning through the tuning range to find a peak reading?
Is your signal received at any distance from the ATU? If so the meter circuit could have a problem.
If all of those seem to be in order you might want to check the coax for a short between the center conductor and shield. Also check for continuity of the center conductor from end to end as well as the shield.
Have you tried the "wire" antenna to see if the transmitter is working? When using the wire antenna you should hear the internal antenna tuner working until it finds the "sweet spot" at which point the signal should be receivable for a few hundred feet depending on how the wire antenna is positioned. Again, this requires the antenna switch on the rear of the unit to be in the right position to use the wire antenna connection.
Assumming the transmitter is working properly there's really not much else to check.
One other thing you may want to try. On my ATU, I couldn't get a reading, so I cracked it open, and found the glue holding one of the two adjustable ferrite rods broke off, so I couldn't adjust the rod. After re-glueing, all was well.