It shouldn't take so much force that you need pliers to slide the connector body onto the cable. That sounds to me like the foil is jamming up inside the cable/connector. What I've always done with t
Two things to keep in mind here: 1 - The shield of the CATV drop should be grounded at the entrance to every subscriber along the route as per electrical code. 2 - The shield of the hardline on the p
Have you made any loss measurements across transformers constructed in this way? I'm curious what you've been seeing performance-wise as I've been thinking of constructing a similar transformer for a
I would add that "sweep tested" doesn't necessarily mean the cable is good quality. I've seen some "sweep tested" RG6 made for satellite use that had maybe a 10% braid. I considered it to be horrible
Why not use a DPDT relay as a bypass... This would allow the antenna side to be shorted to ground and the preamp input to be terminated into 50 or 75 ohms via a resistor, or in the "other" position t
My vertical (without toploading) is a 6-wire cage. I used the 18awg insulated copperweld and spreaders I made form aluminum sheet and extrusions. It tunes well, although I can't compare it to a singl
Just an FYI: If you have the FM filter installed that will work for AM too. That's what I use for occasional BC band listening on my K3 since I don't have an AM filter installed. -Bill KB8WYP works b
That material that looks like superman's zip cord is known as "Rural C" drop wire. My book says that comes in 18.5 gauge (yes, half a gauge!) which is RUS standard #PE-7 spec #4295, 14 and 12 gauge (
You can get coax with a PE outer jacket, although I think they usually use MDPE instead of HDPE for coax. All you need to do is order the direct-bury type, which should almost always have a PE jacket
Just FYI for anyone interested, there is a listing on Ebay for item wire. While it's a little lightweight at only 22 awg, it's by far the cheapest I've seen for a good quantity reel of wire. If you n
Did the DXE board have a conformal coating applied? If it did not (which is poor design considering it is intended to operate outdoors), you can get small cans of the stuff made by Techni-Spray. I've
It's probably worth noting that while the LED will run on DC *at full intensity*, many/most of the controllers "dim" the light using PWM so in that case there is a square wave of varying duty cycle d
Cat5 impedance (for each individual pair) is supposed to be 100 ohms. Note that there is cat5 out there of questionable quality just like for coax, but you're usually OK if you stick with the major b
I buy 5,000 foot reels (which is the minimum order from my supplier) of 18 awg solid copper wire from a local wholesale wire supply house. You should be able to get most electrical supply houses to o
flooded the possible the The flooding compound is intended to protect the cable against *minor* defects in the jacket such as *small* punctures or nicks. The general idea is to protect against the k
the issue. I the cable There is some non-bonded foil cable out there. I don't like it as it's much more difficult to properly terminate. Much of the bonded cable also has a backer on the foil though
You might check Coaxial Dynamics (CDI). Their slugs are interchangeable with the Bird slugs and they have some ranges that Bird might not, apparently. Some of the less common Bird slugs (like the 250
That sounds like the power supply is missing the usual common-mode input filter that switching power supplies nearly always have. There are companies like corcom that make emi filters for the line. S
A lot, probably most, of the really cheap UPSes are just switching step-up converters. The easy way to spot them is from the crazy ratings like "1000va" but only 3 amps (which should be about 360va).
I suspect the corroded foil would have little measurable effect on the coax's shielding effectiveness for lower frequencies. The foil is primarily there for the higher frequencies, the braid for the