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Re: [TowerTalk] Long Cable for Yaesu Rotor

To: "towertalk@contesting.com" <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Long Cable for Yaesu Rotor
From: "Ralston, William" <William.Ralston@viasat.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 03:51:37 +0000
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Larry K4AB asks:

>I'm planning for a run of 400' and I'm thinking that maybe too long,
>even using the heavier cable.

I've never had a problem with my Yaesu G-1000.  It was fed through a 435' foot 
run using a mix of two-strands-in-paralleled of #18, single #18, and #12 wire.  
It's a bit complex because I have bulkheads with lighting arrestors at both the 
house and tower, and feed three rotators and a number of control boxes though 
several shared wire bundles (I'll call them cables).  Before rearranging 
things, I had 10 different cables providing 50 distinct wires (plus a number of 
shields/grounds) all run through the 325' underground conduit).  I used heavier 
wire (or two wires in parallel) for the motor runs.  I did some cost 
calculations and concluded that, for my situation, using a lot of locally 
available (big box home improvement store) cable was more economical that any 
"rotator" cable.

So, here's the details on my G-1000 wiring, it used the following:

18/10 cable is underground rated "sprinkler wire" - 10 insulated #18 wires
12/2 cable is UF ("underground feeder") grade "house wire" - 2 insulated #12 
wires plus a bare ground wire

100' (from rotator to tower bulkhead) - 2 #18 in parallel for each line (2 
motor lines, 3 indicator pot lines x 2 each for total 10 wires)
325' (from tower bulkhead to house bulkhead) - #12 for motor, single #18 for pot
10' (from control box to house bulkhead) 2 #18 in parallel for motor, single 
#18 for pot

The 18/10 cable is underground rated "sprinkler wire"
The 12/2 is UF ("underground feeder") grade "house wire"

As a good undergraduate EE exercise you can look up the resistance of the #18 
and #12 wire and do all the necessary calculations to calculate the total 
resistance for the motor and pot lines (they're different) if you like.  :-)
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