When I hijacked this thread it was my intention to just point out that you
should make a loss/gain budget and determine where you could get the best bang
for your buck. Let the numbers tell you whether you should put up a new
antenna, buy an amp, or get better coax. It is going to be dependent on your
operating practice, the microwave guy is going to have a whole different list
of items to improve his setup than the lowband operator.
Instead, I got 4 sources of cheaper coax, one comment of being full of "sh*t",
a couple of "Does it really matter?", and a couple of "all the tenths of a dB
eventually add up to something that matters".
All true to some extent.
The point is that it is "your" budget. Gain wise and money wise. It is going
to be tailored to you and what is most important to you may not be to somebody
else's situation. Roger, K8RI, makes a good point, "Can you hear a dB?" When
you have a couple of them you can. His other good point is something you can't
buy and that is operating technique. A good op is worth a couple of dB right
off the bat, nobody admits they are a crappy op just like nobody admits they
are a bad driver.
So check out your own station, figure out how much gain you get if you buy the
best coax. Analyze your noise floor. Maybe you have a FB signal but can't
hear anything because the noise floor is too high. (Great comment on RX
antennas, Jim K9YC, wish I could get my RX loops to work even partly as good as
the Beverages did.) When you figure out how much money or effort each
improvement is going to net you then it will be obvious what your next station
improvement project should be.
Earl
N8SS
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