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Re: Topband: [Bulk] Re: RG-6 questions

To: topband@contesting.com
Subject: Re: Topband: [Bulk] Re: RG-6 questions
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2015 14:03:09 -0700
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>
On Mon,3/16/2015 10:52 AM, Mike Waters wrote:
The Commscope flooded quad-shield RG-6 I bought was was significantly less
than 10 cents a foot, and that included shipping! For two 1000' rolls, two
different sellers, months apart.

Right. But it doesn't have two 97% copper braid shields. Remember that coax loss is I squared R below 500 MHz, so what matters is conductor resistance at the frequency of interest. As Tom has noted, you can't tell much from RG-numbers, few modern cables conform to their original MIL specs. Rather, you must study the data sheet, if you can find one.

Belden is better than average at that, but note that the precision of their loss specs is a tenth of a dB in 100 ft, and few CCS cables have loss specified below 10 MHz. That means, for example, that a loss spec of 0.1 could be anything between 0.05 and ).149; 0.2 between 0.15 and 0.249. If your run is only 100 ft, that's probably plenty good enough. But if your run is 400 ft, that means the loss is between 0.2 and 0.6 dB, or between 0.6 and 1.0 dB. Many of us do a lot for 0.4 dB in the TX chain. :)

The 240 ft feedlines to my 160M sloping wires are Commscope 3227, which is #10 solid copper center, heavy copper braid plus foil. I've measured 0.22 dB/100 ft at 1.8 MHz.

73, Jim K9YC
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