[TowerTalk] Help wanted: Removing Prodelin hardline jacket

[Steve Maki]

Absent a prep tool made for the cable, you're stuck with using a utility 
knife with a NEW blade. After you score the jacket with your pipe 
cutter, make the lengthwise knife cut slowly using a fair bit of 
pressure. It will take a few passes. I wouldn't worry too much if the 
shield gets nicked a little on the lengthwise cut. You do NOT want it to 
be nicked by the pipe cutter though. Jim's suggestion of heating the 
jacked might help some. If you only need to remove a 1/2" of jacket, a 
good technique is to simply use downward pressure (a ton) with a rocking 
motion of the blade.

I thought I'd had my hands on just about every hardline cable known to 
man, but yours is the 2nd recent reference to Prodelin cable. I've never 
heard of it. Prodelin was a big name in the satellite earth station 
industry for many years. Most cable used in that segment was 75 ohms. 
But early on when the first downconversion happened inside the building, 
they used 50 ohm cable to transport the 4 GHZ LNA output. Usually it was 
mere RG-8, but on long runs it would be hardline.

-Steve K8LX

On 9/19/2022 10:43 AM, Tyler Stewart via TowerTalk wrote:
> I’ve got a bunch of this old cable I acquired through FRC that’s been buried for 25 years and now I want to use it!
> It’s about 1-1/4” with a spiral aluminum shield. And really tough plastic jacket.  I don’t know if it’s age related, but I’m having a heck of a time trying to remove it.   I used a pipe cutter for the initial scoring,  but otherwise just hacking at it with a utility knife tryin not to gouge the aluminum shield.
> Suggestions?
> 73,  Ty K3MM
> 
> 
> Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS
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