Choose the Wrong Coax Cable for Ham Radio
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- čas přidán 6. 12. 2023
- We know that CHEAP is often not so good. But what happens if you chose the wrong coax for you installation? What is the loss? How do you work out what coax you should buy? How do you work out the loss? This quick video solves this issue.
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Great info Cal !!!!
Great to see someone from my generation enjoying ham radio too. 😊
Buy once, cry once. Antenna is #1, Coax/Feed is #2, everything else is way down on the list of priorities.
The only coaxcable I use is Messi & Paoloni Ultraflex-13 (for hf and vhf/uhf) Distance from shack to antenna's is about 45 meters. The loss for transmitting can be solved by using more output power :-) But for me the loss on trancieved signal is more important. I have very good results with Messi & Paoloni. Other coaxcable I have used are Belden H-1000 and Aircom Premium. These are also exellent cables, but I think not as good as Messi & Paoloni, and very important, not as flexibel as Messi & Paoloni. 73 PD4PS
I remember when i got back into radios earler this year & got my first ticket i bought 5-6 different peaces of coax from amazon & ebay an even one local & Every Single Peace was junk so i did my research & found M&P Coax & Connectors & i have ben running their Hyperflex 10 sahara for my VHF/UHF with their Great Evo Connectors & Haven't Looked Back. Now All my Coax Is M&P as well as all my Connectors is all EVO Connectors Very Good Stuff IMHO
When people ask I always tell them to buy the best, usually name brand, coax they can afford. I have used so many different kinds it's hard to remember them all. I finally was able to run 120ft of lmr400 to my Classic and 75ft of rg213 to my efhw. Great success with both setups and no issues since the installations 2 years ago. I use a 50ft piece of M&P Ultraflex 7 for portable setups because I wanted to use something I could do HF and VHF with that was a little more flexible. I took a 75ft piece of rg213, cut it in half and put some of the screw on connectors like you did the video on. My old pieces of rg8x are in the box as backups but will probably never get used. Thanks for another fun and informative video!
being a ham for 60 years I kind of figured this stuff is well know by everyone..........apparently not...........too bad they don't include it in the license tests as it is much more usefull than a lot of what's tested.....some poor guy studies hard and passes his tests, gets on the air with "100 watts & a wire" fed with 100' for $10 RG-58 and makes 4 contacts, gets discouraged and that's it for him..........Cheers from New England to Old England, Mike, K1FNX near Boston......
I usually pick the lowest loss for highest frequency for what I'm doing, which is usually 10m band. I often find the Messi & Paoloni is my best option. I've got Airborne 10 and Hyper Flex 10 running to 3 different antennas. Another antenna I'm just using some ABR LMR400 simply because I had the exact length I needed for my 4th antenna.
Great video.
G'day Callum,
A few years back I walked into a discount store and there sat 1 big spool with 1000 meters of Times Microwave LMR-240 (Paid $89.99 CAD) solid core not flexi, but low loss. So sweet!
Yes good coax is a must. Doing The connections correct will make it c worthwhile or turn it into a hot pile of garbage.
The best coax is 1 and 5/8 inch hardline. Now, who wants to pay for it?
As always TA2NC says, The "good antenna/good cable" is the cheapest "Power Amplifier". 73 DE TA2BOS
One thing that doesn't ever get mentioned and becomes more important the longer you go is noise.
As a Foundation m7 I'm only allowed 10w; my rig has 5,15,25w outputs, and using the feed line loss to lower the RF to 10w, by the way I'm using RG8X on the 2m/70cm band! In some cases loss can be useful.
Balanced line is great if you're using a non-resonant antenna or one with an appropriate feed point impedance. I used to use a folded dipole for 40m, fed with 300R twin, but then of course I needed a 6:1 transformer before the tx.
Great video, loss calculations should be the starting point. You have to get as much power to the antenna feed point that you can live with, without having to donate a vital organ 😊.
We've got an 'expert' on coax here in GI who thinks that you need to buy a pl259 radio end plug and a pl259 antenna end plug. Swapping them will destroy your rig 😂
Nice one, useful video . Mark.