Coax cable pontification, or dB per pound.

[Steve G4WCS]

I've got 3 15M coax cable runs to do.

One for an 11/10 vertical (sirio 2016)

One for a rotatable 2 ele 6m yagi

One for a rotatable 5 ele 2m yagi.

do I ?

1) Forget the internet exists, wire everything with the Drum of RG58 I already have, and ignore the odd dB of loss here and there , because there's no one on the bands anyway until sporadic E season, and then I could have used bell wire. with the money I save I could buy another piece of radio related junk to play about with.

2) Spend £40 on a drum of RG8 mini, because it could be a lottery what spec its manufactured to and where, and I might get lucky, plus all the CB'ers are using it so it must be good, and I can use 25p PL259 connectors with it and solder them with my 25 watt antex.

3) Believe the hype and spend £130 on a drum of Paolo Nutini supeflex 7 linear crystal oxgygen free copper, hand braided by nymphs. with no loss figures quoted on the website, because "its so good it puts into shade the competitor cables of the same diameter " Hey, I might even get to work E-M-E. (shades of audiophoolery at RF )

4) don't be so tight, buy a £50 drum of RG8, do all the cable runs with this, and be content in the satisfaction that nobody on facebook is going to be sneering at my antenna cabling

[HamishBoxer]

Spend the £50 on new drum of RG8

[ex seismic]

Use your RG58 and buy beer. For a 15m run the only possibly significant losses will be on 2m, and with a 5 ele beam......

[MrBungle]

Perching a deck chair on the roof and donning a rain mac is the best option.

For everything else there's stuffing more power down the feed or getting mugged for Belden H155 I find. I was going to attempt to build a masthead preamp for my 2m antics but it's hardly worth it for a slim jim on a fishing pole.

[Radio Wrangler]

Mind you, there is some very nasty stuff being sold as RG58.

Best dissect a piece and see what the braid coverage is like before you use any.

David

[MrBungle]

Indeed. Moonraker palm off some half decent stuff at hamfests I've noticed. It's got excellent braid coverage. It's their "military spec" RG58. I doubt the credentials but it's what my HF antennna is fed with at the moment and I'm making contacts at 5W into the feed with it. Antenna is a poorly constructed 40/20m loaded inverted V in a tree.
Edit: this stuff: https://www.moonraker.eu/cable-conne...ohm-coax-cable

[HamishBoxer]

I have bought that military grade from Moonraker, it is fine.

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by MrBungle

Indeed. Moonraker palm off some half decent stuff at hamfests I've noticed. It's got excellent braid coverage. It's their "military spec" RG58. I doubt the credentials but it's what my HF antennna is fed with at the moment and I'm making contacts at 5W into the feed with it. Antenna is a poorly constructed 40/20m loaded inverted V in a tree.
Edit: this stuff: https://www.moonraker.eu/cable-conne...ohm-coax-cable

That's what I've got feeding a 12AVQ here. It seems to work (though 21/28MHz are deader than the proverbial dodo right now: maybe there will be some action later in the summer?).

[MrBungle]

I can receive 15m on my antenna just about. I heard a guy about 5 miles away from me calling CQ on it via groundwave (he must have been putting out some watts!) and that was it in the last year.

[dodgy-dxer]

Scout around on eBay and local rallies - 15m is an "off cut" for many people

73 Fred
G4BWP

Originally Posted by Steve G4WCS

I've got 3 15M coax cable runs to do.

One for an 11/10 vertical (sirio 2016)

One for a rotatable 2 ele 6m yagi

One for a rotatable 5 ele 2m yagi.

do I ?

1) Forget the internet exists, wire everything with the Drum of RG58 I already have, and ignore the odd dB of loss here and there , because there's no one on the bands anyway until sporadic E season, and then I could have used bell wire. with the money I save I could buy another piece of radio related junk to play about with.

2) Spend £40 on a drum of RG8 mini, because it could be a lottery what spec its manufactured to and where, and I might get lucky, plus all the CB'ers are using it so it must be good, and I can use 25p PL259 connectors with it and solder them with my 25 watt antex.

3) Believe the hype and spend £130 on a drum of Paolo Nutini supeflex 7 linear crystal oxgygen free copper, hand braided by nymphs. with no loss figures quoted on the website, because "its so good it puts into shade the competitor cables of the same diameter " Hey, I might even get to work E-M-E. (shades of audiophoolery at RF )

4) don't be so tight, buy a £50 drum of RG8, do all the cable runs with this, and be content in the satisfaction that nobody on facebook is going to be sneering at my antenna cabling

[Sean Williams]

Personally, I wouldn't use RG58 above 30MHz - I use it in my shack to feed HF receivers from a distribution amplifier.

Anything that transmits starts in RG214 and transitions to Heliax as soon as it leaves the shack.

Why go to the trouble of putting up beams if you are going to loose so much of the signal you want in lossy coaxial cables?

[Jon_G4MDC]

RG214 for Jumpers on any band then LDF2-50 if not so far and only VHF.
Like up a tree - as mine is.

House to shack at end of garden (30m?) is LDF4-50, patchable to use on VHF Low or High.

All this H-100 and weird stuff - sorry don't trust it. RG223 and RG214 from a good cable house are OK for jumpers. Decent cable for long runs will cost you money.

RG8 and RG58 - too many impersonators to know what you have. And in the original they were not that great anyway!

[m0cemdave]

Originally Posted by Jon_G4MDC

RG8 and RG58 - too many impersonators to know what you have.

I use RG223 instead of RG58. Although it has similar loss, it has a better screen.

But the real reason is that nobody has yet ordered a Chinese factory to make the cheapest lookalike they can regardless of quality, to be shipped here by the container load and labelled as the proper stuff ...

[Steve G4WCS]

Don't know how I manage it but landed on a 25M length of RG-213 off of facebook for six quid. I've got a length already so will do 10 and 6 with this, will need a join but I'll do it on 10 from the bucket of N type plugs and line sockets in the shack, and invest in a length of ecoflex or paulo Nutini for 2, and I'm having a beer.

Cheers all For the replies. Trial assembled the 6M LFA tonight.

[Biggles]

Consider the extra cost of the connectors too. Brass LDF-xxx connectors were always pricey when I used to install it years ago. I have a box of "recycled" connectors saved over the years from de-installs so rarely actually buy them, but I would imagine that even for UR67 (or whatever the modern equivalent is) the connectors are getting pricey. I generally use decent quality RG58 but if the run is long or I need a bit of better performance I use UR67. For mobile installs I always use RG58.
Alan.

[Radio Wrangler]

Shop around for connectors.

Compression mount N males for RG213 seemed to be twenty odd quid at Farnell and 8 quid at RS. The RS ones arrived on Tuesday, the brand formerly known as Greenpar, silver plated, fully satisfactory for my purposes.

David

[MrBungle]

Yeah also lurk on ebay. I managed to get a box of Amphenol BNC connectors still bagged for £30. I got 47 RG58 compression plugs, 37 bulkheads, 5 T pieces and a dead cockroach for that. They were all the nice silver plated ones. All still bagged apart from the cockroach They had N connectors as well but I didn't take them as I didn't have anything with N connectors on it at the time.

[Richard - F4VPR]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Shop around for connectors.

Compression mount N males for RG213 seemed to be twenty odd quid at Farnell and 8 quid at RS. The RS ones arrived on Tuesday, the brand formerly known as Greenpar, silver plated, fully satisfactory for my purposes.

David

Yep, I also use RG213 from RS and their connectors too, no complaints about the braid coverage or the connectors.

No PL259's ever escape the shack, outside it is all N Types and double covered with self-amalgamating and then insulation tape for UV resistance.

LF 74m doublet is all balanced line from a Palstar BT1500A.

Being in a lightning area I have a 3mm copper plate with all the grounds on bolts and tags using wide braid to the 4 ground rods and N Type bulkhead sockets for the coax feed-ins.

First rumbles and I move the connectors to unused and grounded ports, a little hassle but way cheaper than a new FT-5000 or WHY, and the balanced line uses an old, ceramic, knife switch for grounding/connecting the feeders which are static bled each side with 300K resistors to ground.

R.

[MrBungle]

I wish they'd do away with PL259 full stop. The things are cancer. I've actually replaced the PL259 on my MFJ259 with a BNC.

My lightning protection: feed goes in the kitchen window. When there's a strike risk, the last 4m from the window into my operating position gets rolled up, chucked in a tesco bag
with a cable tie around it and thrown out of the window

[Richard - F4VPR]

Originally Posted by MrBungle

I wish they'd do away with PL259 full stop. The things are cancer. I've actually replaced the PL259 on my MFJ259 with a BNC.

I wouldn't disagree, the best are not ideal and the un-solderable, melt-o-matic dielectric types to be had for peanuts are truly dreadful.

Then the time I spent in Winchester fixing radios, and some that properly had a N Type for V/UHF but some gorilla had forced the de rigeur PL259 in there with water-pump pliers. . . . . . . . .

Originally Posted by MrBungle

My lightning protection: feed goes in the kitchen window. When there's a strike risk, the last 4m from the window into my operating position gets rolled up, chucked in a tesco bag with a cable tie around it and thrown out of the window

Wise man, seen quite a few totally BER with lightning damage, nothing much visible but every device and all the VLSI blown to an O/C; lucky is the radio only blown from the front end to the first mixer.

R.