TopBand: Coaxial Cable Traps

[Larry Molitor]

At 20:59 8/7/98 -0400, you wrote:
>At the time we thought about RG-58 insulated with Teflon , but were
>warned off by a sales representative from a wire company.  He said the
>center conductor of the coaxial cable, wound over a 1.9 or 2.4 inch
>diameter form would eventually drift in the insulation, as the Teflon
>would flow slightly from winding and from each inductive heating from a
>night's operation by a DX-pedition.  Was this fellow knowledgeble, or
>just overly conservative?  I never experimeted with the Teflon coax, so
>there is no experience in Battle Creek.

George,

The coax you want is RG-141 or RG-142, (single or double shield) same size
as RG-58. It's amazing stuff. I used to routinely run 1500 watts thru it on
2 mtrs with no problem. On 160 mtrs, I'd guss you could run 8-10 Kw without
a meltdown. The coax does get hot, but the teflon they use in it is pretty
tuff stuff and should not present a problem with DXpedition power levels on
160 or 80. The teflon will cold flow if crushed or bent on a very tight
radius, but I've not had any trouble with 2 - 2.5 in. radius bends. It is a
little hard to work with as the center conductor is usually silver plated
steel .

73,

Larry - W7IUV
w7iuv@axtek.com
www.axtek.com/w7iuv

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