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VHF cable type?
On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 06:01:33 GMT, (Larry W4CSC) wrote:
All these numbers mean NOTHING if you pull foam cable around a CORNER.
The solid center conductor migrates through the flimsy foam that gives
it such a great set of numbers and it goes all to hell......
Solid center conductors also BREAK if you bend them back and forth as
the loose cable in the mast moves back and forth and back and forth on
every wave.
RG-58A/U has the same loss AFTER you pull it than when it was on the
reel. It's very flexible, finely stranded center conductor and very
hard polyethelene dielectric will take a helluva beating with no
migration around tight turns.
Most boats I know have no room for inch and a half hardline from the
radio to the mast......dammit. 58A/U (not 58/U which is solid
centered) works great for years and years......It's made for MOBILE
service.
Gee, thanks, Larry...here I thought I was screwing up...
My radio experience is painfully limited...as a teen in the '70s I ran
a 40 channel CB base station and used RG-8U...soldered my own
connections and all and put up a free-standing 30 foot tower and
directional antenna (squeaky pulley!). I know 58U was for cars, and
there was no way I was running expensive and heavy 8U up my mast, so I
used 58A/U for the 50 foot run from mast head to a splitter (for AM/FM
radio) under a settee and a further 10 feet to my VHF unit at the nav
station.
I tried a "real world" test with local Coast Guard (5x5 to receivers
about 1,200 higher than me 20 miles away) and with my wife talking to
me in a Zodiac from the boat at dawn some 7 miles away (reckoning by
GPS) over some intervening low land. I could hear her on my handheld
quite well, and she could hear me weakly, but clearly.
So I have no qualms about the 58A/U, the ICOM base unit and the old
whip antenna on a Metz mount...standard coaster rig and good for my
end of Lake Ontario, it seems.
Most of the time I use the handheld (a Standard Horizon 260S with
which I am quite pleased) in the cockpit anyway and save the base unit
for American WX and ship/bridge traffic and whatnot.
My .02 (1.4 U.S)
R.
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