Friday, September 4, 2015

Coaxial Friday!

Making up some jumper cables for some gear on the Iowa.

Most of them will be fabricated from DX Engineering cable, specifically their "400MAX" cable, which I've been using for some time now, but a couple of them will be Andrew LDF4-50 Heliax cable.

Heliax is great stuff. I've helped dismantle 50 year old repeater installations that used it, and the cable still looks, and performs, like brand-new cable.

Even the connectors are reusable if you take them apart with care.

Anyway....maybe post a few pix of them later today......

4 comments:

  1. Hey! LDF4-50 half inch hardline? Really good stuff!

    I have a run up to my 2 meter antenna made of that stuff. Got it surplus at a place I worked in the mid 80s. With N connectors on the ends, it's a 35 foot or so piece. Used it when I put up my first 2m SSB station back then. It's like having the antenna on the back of the rig. Minus a few tenths of a dB.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, yeah, best coaxial cable in the world!

    It's used all over the ship. I haven't noticed any smaller than 1/2", but the largest I've found is some 3-1/8" stuff that runs to a pair of transmitting antennas located near the aft stack.

    I've got several hundred feet here in 50~75 foot lengths that I bought brand-new, in the bag, with new N connectors, at the TRW swapmeet.

    It was all surplus from a cell site upgrade. I would have bought more, but I ran out of cash.....

    ReplyDelete
  3. More like "busy work" than actual work.

    For "regular" coax, like the DX Engineering stuff. I can strip the cable, install the connector, and shrink the sleeving in about 15 minutes per end.

    The Heliax takes longer, usually 20~30 minutes per connector, depending on the size of the cable.

    ReplyDelete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

 At 1700 local it's as described in the headline; 30*F, 88% RH, completely overcast, snowing like crazy (small flakes, but lots of them)...