Topband: RG6 coax questions

[jeremy maris]

I'd support  Guy Olinger's  K2AV  comments re coax quality.

I bought a  copper braid CCS  "satellite cable" variant of RG6U from ebay that looked fine and would probably have worked fine for short runs for TV use but  the measured attenuation at 1.8MHz was 3.6 dB per 100m. Given that we were using 750m of it on a long cable run to a remote beverage field, it didn't work very well, even with a head preamp. 

The high attenuation must have been skin depth  of  the copper plating and Chinese "value engineering" - connectors were OK and there was no sign of rust.

I'm now using CX167 Direct Bury, which has a solid copper core and a measured loss of 0.55 dB per 100m at 1.8MHz. Twice the price in a closeout sale but  way better!  

That said,  I'm sure that decent RG6U from Commscope et al will be OK  but I'll never buy CCS again...

73,

Jeremy G3XDK/G4AQG