Trying to record from one tape to the other. Shitty pic.

I have a Panasonic Omnivison VCR. It's at least 11 years old. The other 2 are a Samtron and a Samsung that are at lesast 6years old. I'm only hooking up 2 at a time, not all 3 together.

I'm trying to edit some home videos and taped TV shows. Take out some things, commercials..etc. So regular blank record tapes, not copyrighted ones.

The best picture I got was playing it on the Panasonic and recording with the Samtron. But everytime I paused it to record again, there'd be snow/fuz/blinking for about a minute.
I switched some things around and then the picture became worse. Fuzzy, slow, a lot of red in the color..
If this is a macrovision problem then it wouldn't be on the Panasonic. So I thought I could play it with that.. but its still screwing up.

Is there any other way to hook these up to make it record clearer and without the pauseing problem?

I have no idea about flying erase heads..How do you check for that? Might not be clean, they were in the dusty basement. I can record off the TV though and get a clear pic.

Could it also have anything to do with too many connections weaking everything?

Forgot to mention how I have them hooked up..

First VCR: Cable going into "in from ant".
"out from antenna" going into second VCR's "in fron antenna"
Second VCR connected to TV

Ok dumb question..

Can I just use the yellow and whie rcas or do I really need the red? I have 2 rca cables already, just no red.