[TowerTalk] Coax Cable choices

[Jim Brown]

On 8/18/2017 11:16 AM, Richard Smith wrote:
> I realize this question may be too generic, but what might folks here on Towertalk recommend for these applications?

Hi Rich,

About 10 years ago, a colleague acquired a lot of spools of virgin 
Commscope 3227, which is designed and specified for use at UHF in a 
wireless telecom application. He also acquired 2427K, which is the 
plenum version. It's solid #10 copper center with shield construction 
similar to LMR400. The loss spec STARTS at 500 MHz. :) It's a VERY 
robust cable, and has published loss characteristics comparable to the 
published specs for LMR400. About five years ago, I made up about 1,500 
ft of cables for a DXpedition, and, using an HP generator and HP 
spectrum analzyer (as an RF voltmeter), found that 1300 ft of those 
cables (typically 100-200 ft long with Amphenol 83-1SP connectors) 
spliced using Amphenol barrels, measured BETTER than the published spec 
at 500 MHz!

Other than hard line and RG11 to feed my high dipoles, that's most of 
what's in my station, but I eventually ran out (or have been running 
low). I also found a NOS spool of Belden 8213 (RG11) at HSC that was 
about 85% full, and used it on the high dipoles.

A few years ago, when I needed more RG11, I bought Davis RF's RG11, 
which I subsequently measured and found loss characteristics equivalent 
to the 8213. And when I wanted to replace a collection of randomly 
acquired jumpers (from N6RZ's estate) to clean up crosstalk problems, I 
bought a spool of BuryFlex. I'm quite happy with those cables, and 
recommend them. I find them to be a very good alternative to Belden, 
which I consider the gold standard, but which carry excessive markups 
due to their distribution system through traditional industrial supply 
houses. I've seen no QC issues with Davis, the cables seem quite well 
made, they have been very good to deal with, and their prices are 
competitive. Part of my testing includes a high resolution TDR of the 
entire spool, as well as measurements of a shorter length to feed to 
Zplots to compute and plot VF and attenuation vs frequency.

Those are the only two Davis cables I've used, but I'd expect their 
other cables to be of comparable quality.

73, Jim K9YC