Strange i just stumbled onto your video but i have ben looking for some really good coax & Connectors & Very Recently found a place out of italy that makes some of the best in the world...I have ben into radios for 35+ years ran a shop an all and i used to have trouble out of my coax seam like all the time until i found a 3/4 hard line & Teflon pl259's & that was the end of my coax problems(I was Running a small 2 tuber an maybe a 4 once n a while but i had trouble trying to run a 2..until i found The better quality Stuff..i know for a fact you just need to Buy Once Cry Once..lol.
During this video i kept wanting to comment on this new (to me) coax and connectors i recently came across but i was like nah, im sure hes heard of it but turns out its the same company. I just got a 100 foot sample of the .400 solid core for VHF use and i have to say that i am very impressed with the quality! The copper shield they use is amazing! Always enjoy your videos! 73
I know what Boeing used that Mac Daddy coax cable for. 😉 I've also played with all the other ones on aircraft that I worked on.😎 The radios I used to work on, would put out so much RF that I would knock out power a 5-mile radius from 20,000 ft in the air. I'd like to get all into this stuff again, but I'm a broke truck driver😢
I’m curious as to whether TImes Microwave would do another run of that for a _free range buyer’s group_ and, if they would,, what would be the minimum run and cost per foot (meter ?) BTW I have used that Teflon stye of wrap to insulate some magnetic loop tuning capacitors I was prototyping. It almost worked, but I need some better manufacturing techniques. Fun to try stuff, and learn as it bursts into flames
I scored 100' of marine grade "5DFB" coax for cheap. Japanese made, LMR-300 equivalent. It's not made in this quality any more. Solid #12 center conductor or #10 haven't measured, actual copper not copper clad, foil and braid shield. Love it, wish it was still made in this quality. Chinese still make it for cell phone boosters but its totally different than the original.
I use to be a tech engineer for Micro Coax. We made precision coax assemblies for the military. I believe the new owners are named Carlie. IDK if this helps.?
Messi & Paoloni certainly make nice connectors, they also makes some rather nice flexible cables, though not PTFE. RG400 is enough for me...good to have patch leads that don't crush if a bit of equipment gets sat on them.
Would I be better off with a really long coax to put an antenna on a tall tree far away or shorter coax on a little tower at the house? Any really good coax for direct burial?
Mr BBI have you looked at the The S65161-A is a super low loss coaxial cable that’s also highly flexible, and unusually lightweight with electrical characteristics comparable to RG393
If you run that kind of power, you really need air dielectric! So the heating is from the higher voltage and current? That is into a 50 ohm resistive load when your coax got that hot running 30kw? Have you broken down the dielectric of Heliax feedlines? The reason this intrigues me is that it's about radiated power at the antenna and not just how many watts you can cram to it. Teflon coax was never really made to be for long runs as it is kind of lossy. It is a jumper coax. I know this is an older video but for some reason UA-cam is showing me CB coax and coax "tuning" videos! lol Thanks
One of my rules of thumb being a computer tech: I don't know it all. I don't want to know it all. But when I need to know something I don't, I know where to look for the answers. That rule goes for asking someone else, or knowing someone who might have that answer, or where to look on the Interboob.
I'll have to check the DFARS system and see if there's another run being made. Just a guess, but I would think layering the dialectric aids flexibility.
I've been on a very different coax journey.. I'm looking for coax that can stand very many repeated bendings yet be extremely low loss.. I'm running QRP at vhf frequencies so the lower the loss the better. Since I have to tear down and setup every time I operate my coax take a real beating.. I dunno, this is probably not the right place to ask but hey, it can't hurt :)
@@BoxBuilderIdaho First, thank you for the replies! 5 watts at most. Small is good, but I am running RG8x now without too much pain so it doesn't have to be crazy small. I know I don't want to mess with my LMR400 out in the park, that is too big and resistant to bending to be handy.
Cable from Boeing 204-15578 is not the biggest Teflon Core flexible coax out there, the biggest is actually RG211: center conductor = 4 gauge solid copper, Jacket Diameter = 0.71 inches...sadly it's only available to US military. Closest equivalent might be specialty aerospace coax like RFMATES PIC_UH25107 (8 gauge), or maybe Carlisle 310701 (7 gauge). If you need 45 kilowatt CW power, try 1+1/4 inch diameter coax like Heliax AVA6-50 which is used on almost ever cell tower in the USA, connector are part number 114EZNF and cost about $87 each which is too expensive so I just make my own out of copper water pipe.
The 204- p/n is unique to E-3 AWACS US NATO UK FR specific and not the 707 airframe original. Cage 81205 is Boeing. A single dash number indicates a part, -10, -20 , -100 and so on would indicate an assembly.
That would be great if you could find a more flexible equivalent to the Heliax coaxial cable then maybe my former neighbor could turn his house this direction and say hello 😁
Okay so you just mentioned you're going to put that in your truck and test it with five or six thousand Watts.... so is that going to be five or six thousand pep.. like you always show on your bench because you never really showcase modulated RMS Bird
Mobile implies short runs. Maybe not quite 6 feet short, but short nonetheless. 1/2 wave with RG400 is just a hair over 12.5 feet. And when BBI says low power, understand that he works with some properly massive numbers. 300 watts is quite low power by contrast. Hell, even 1K is. I have a 12 foot RG400 jumper on the way that I'll be using in my diesel wagon with a barefoot SR955. I'll let you know how it works out.
RG217 is what I've been running last few years , wasn't happy lmr stuff myself that all the so called experts in my area said was the cat's meow , as I became more experienced with radios and started doing my own homework I started using the 217 and haven't looked back , thanks for helping me along with my radio education BBI my friend another great video brother .
I used to have "Spools" of that, My Father was a radar engineer for Lockheed Aircraft back in the 50,60 and 70's. Lockheed used to scrap stuff like that after an Aircraft rebuild and Dad would bring it home!!! Iknow of a place in California that scraps Milspec electrical equipment,those are the places to find that Coax.
I get that this coax can take high power, but I'm still lost as to why you need broadcast levels of power? If you're on CB it's a 5 watt limit, yeah running a 500w linear or a 1000w linear, yea cool, you probably won't get much attention, but 5-8000w? why on earth do you need that much power? If you're on 27mhz the majority of people will be anywhere from 5-1000w, if you you pump out 8000w, all you will do is get heard by many people, but you can't hear them. For this reason it's better to look at antenna design, as getting gain at the antenna is much better than trying to ram power into an antenna. Also at 8000w the antenna itself is going to need some design considerations, making it cost more. My choice of coax is FSJ4-50a which is a heliax, I'm never going to be running more than 400w of power through it, mostly 100w, why I chose this cable is that it not only has low loss, but it also has low noise, as the jacket is solid. Braided jacket coax will have more noise induced by the braid, it gets worse when you have a braid on foil and even worse when the braid and foil are different metals. This noise can get substantial over long lengths like 100ft or 30m in real numbers, the noise can rise 3-6db, remember 10w to 100w is 6db which is one s unit. So 100w to 1000w is one s unit, so if your coax has 6db of noise being introduced you're losing a whole s unit on SnR. This is why I choose heliax, as it can help lower the SnR which is what you need to make contacts, not blasting your signal out yet you can't hear any replies. Also heliax connectors are usually much better quality, I have Messi & Peloni ultra flex 10 in a 10m roll with PL-259 connectors, yeah great quality, but my FSJ4-50 N connectors are Chinese and of near or better quality. The actual mobile phone tower connectors make Ham/CB type PL-259 connectors look like threaded banana plugs which is what they really are. Any way each to their own, I really like that Boeing coax but I will never need that much heat resistance, and if I ever did, I would just step up to 7/8 heliax or larger like broadcast sites do.
I've watched and read your coax off the gods series trying to understand where your coming from. I'm just an old swabby and radio guy. I've worked from 7 watts sideband cb to 55 million watts radar and frequencies that fry seagulls in flight. It seems your only talking about pure power handling coax that can be used on mobile and base stations cb 27mhz. I'm not in that world. I'm in the VHF world mainly and fiddle with 1.2 and 10ghz. LMR, TIMES MICROWAVE is the best choice for high frequencies up to 2.4ghz in hobby use. It's about containing the skin effect that's problematic in that world. It's not for power handling. It's low loss by virtue of velocity factor from better capacitance characteristics. The word you want to use of course is IMPEDANCE. My Aerial, that's the word for receive only antenna is much farther away and 7 wavelengths long in Rhomboid shape. That gets rg-11 burial grade. 75 ohm cable is less impedance and allows a very low voltage VHF UHF signal to travel with the least loss. These are my creative solutions in my budget based on 50 years of mostly military professional and barefoot Ham radio 10 meters and higher. It's important to clarify to your audience that you are after power handling with low impedance to 27 MHz signals. Of course RG 217, 213 and all the variants will exceed LMR. AND... Your friends are also blasting 5kw back to you so receive loss to micro volts is unimportant. So for the record as you have found out, RG or Radio Guide and it's numbers is old tech retired military standards. The new standards are C17 and folks can be informed by the excellent materials from a top tier vendor ALLIED WIRE AND CABLE at ALLIED UNIVERSITY. It's also a good place to buy cutoffs from reels at great prices. You can have them make your cable of the gods if you have the money. I'm a broke ass swabby that came looking for 500 watts of 2m amplifier to realize my dream of an EME contact. I'm building a boom mounted quad Rhomboid for 29db gain to hit that moon at moonrise-set hoping to EME. I'M SURE YOU KNOW WHAT 2M AMPS ARE GOOD AND WHOS CRAP 😉 You are the man of amps and your always right about swr and ssb. My arthritis is pretty bad like my CW. 😂 www.awcwire.com/allied-university/this-vs-that/rg213-vs-lmr400
Let's be honest RG217 Can handel 20.000++ watt on HF So the top 0.000.000.1% in the World Who aculey can utelize this Even in the standard model .. well
Ótimo trabalho gualidade total parabéns guerreiros bbd bazuka Foz do Iguaçu pr Brasil 🇧🇷🦈 73 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
Strange i just stumbled onto your video but i have ben looking for some really good coax & Connectors & Very Recently found a place out of italy that makes some of the best in the world...I have ben into radios for 35+ years ran a shop an all and i used to have trouble out of my coax seam like all the time until i found a 3/4 hard line & Teflon pl259's & that was the end of my coax problems(I was Running a small 2 tuber an maybe a 4 once n a while but i had trouble trying to run a 2..until i found The better quality Stuff..i know for a fact you just need to Buy Once Cry Once..lol.
Thank you, Mr. BBI, for this very educational video, I learned a lot. Your videos of this kind is greatly appreciated. 73 from Rhode Island.
During this video i kept wanting to comment on this new (to me) coax and connectors i recently came across but i was like nah, im sure hes heard of it but turns out its the same company. I just got a 100 foot sample of the .400 solid core for VHF use and i have to say that i am very impressed with the quality! The copper shield they use is amazing! Always enjoy your videos! 73
Very informative video 556 the Phantom Southeastern Indiana waving🖐️
Mr. BBI SIR, Always an educational video. Another great video, Unit 22 from N.J.
I use BELDEN 8214 FR-1 I bought it at a yard sale, when I was 13yo . I never looked it up. It always works good, for me.
I know what Boeing used that Mac Daddy coax cable for. 😉 I've also played with all the other ones on aircraft that I worked on.😎 The radios I used to work on, would put out so much RF that I would knock out power a 5-mile radius from 20,000 ft in the air. I'd like to get all into this stuff again, but I'm a broke truck driver😢
Now your talking about my old world in the Navy brother. Love a radiating element with red flashing lights that cooks birds in flight. Fun times...
@@radiotests
My favorite thing was to put a chain near the HF ant and watch it dance and spark. We called it spicy chain.
I’m curious as to whether TImes Microwave would do another run of that for a _free range buyer’s group_ and, if they would,, what would be the minimum run and cost per foot (meter ?)
BTW I have used that Teflon stye of wrap to insulate some magnetic loop tuning capacitors I was prototyping. It almost worked, but I need some better manufacturing techniques. Fun to try stuff, and learn as it bursts into flames
I scored 100' of marine grade "5DFB" coax for cheap. Japanese made, LMR-300 equivalent. It's not made in this quality any more. Solid #12 center conductor or #10 haven't measured, actual copper not copper clad, foil and braid shield. Love it, wish it was still made in this quality. Chinese still make it for cell phone boosters but its totally different than the original.
I use to be a tech engineer for Micro Coax. We made precision coax assemblies for the military. I believe the new owners are named Carlie. IDK if this helps.?
Messi & Paoloni certainly make nice connectors, they also makes some rather nice flexible cables, though not PTFE. RG400 is enough for me...good to have patch leads that don't crush if a bit of equipment gets sat on them.
Would I be better off with a really long coax to put an antenna on a tall tree far away or shorter coax on a little tower at the house? Any really good coax for direct burial?
Mr BBI have you looked at the The S65161-A is a super low loss coaxial cable that’s also highly flexible, and unusually lightweight with electrical characteristics comparable to RG393
If you run that kind of power, you really need air dielectric! So the heating is from the higher voltage and current? That is into a 50 ohm resistive load when your coax got that hot running 30kw? Have you broken down the dielectric of Heliax feedlines? The reason this intrigues me is that it's about radiated power at the antenna and not just how many watts you can cram to it. Teflon coax was never really made to be for long runs as it is kind of lossy. It is a jumper coax. I know this is an older video but for some reason UA-cam is showing me CB coax and coax "tuning" videos! lol Thanks
One of my rules of thumb being a computer tech: I don't know it all. I don't want to know it all. But when I need to know something I don't, I know where to look for the answers. That rule goes for asking someone else, or knowing someone who might have that answer, or where to look on the Interboob.
Very impressive coax. Looking up the number, it looks like you can purchase it in 500 foot reels, but no prices found.
Any of these good for car audio?
I'll have to check the DFARS system and see if there's another run being made.
Just a guess, but I would think layering the dialectric aids flexibility.
Look up the Carlisle equivalent. The data sheets show all the available sizes of aircraft coax they make. May or may not have the info you need.
yea the coax of the god's 2.0 is there stuff
www.carlisleit.com/prod-info/ecs-avionics-50-ohm-coax/
So at less than say 500 watts is RG8X still just fine? Mobile set up as a base, 100' coax needed, basic Starduster at ~ 50'high...
Whats your opinion?
I've been on a very different coax journey.. I'm looking for coax that can stand very many repeated bendings yet be extremely low loss.. I'm running QRP at vhf frequencies so the lower the loss the better. Since I have to tear down and setup every time I operate my coax take a real beating.. I dunno, this is probably not the right place to ask but hey, it can't hurt :)
how big?
@@BoxBuilderIdaho Only 25'
No no.. how many watts if you're doing qrp that means very small. And how big like smallest as possible I'm assuming right
@@BoxBuilderIdaho First, thank you for the replies! 5 watts at most. Small is good, but I am running RG8x now without too much pain so it doesn't have to be crazy small. I know I don't want to mess with my LMR400 out in the park, that is too big and resistant to bending to be handy.
RG316 very good for repeated bending.
Times Microwave LMR-1200 is pretty close to what you were looking for...
Lmr is junk. No they are not the same.
Cable from Boeing 204-15578 is not the biggest Teflon Core flexible coax out there, the biggest is actually RG211: center conductor = 4 gauge solid copper, Jacket Diameter = 0.71 inches...sadly it's only available to US military. Closest equivalent might be specialty aerospace coax like RFMATES PIC_UH25107 (8 gauge), or maybe Carlisle 310701 (7 gauge). If you need 45 kilowatt CW power, try 1+1/4 inch diameter coax like Heliax AVA6-50 which is used on almost ever cell tower in the USA, connector are part number 114EZNF and cost about $87 each which is too expensive so I just make my own out of copper water pipe.
I used to run 20kv in it, never broke down.
The 204- p/n is unique to E-3 AWACS US NATO UK FR specific and not the 707 airframe original. Cage 81205 is Boeing. A single dash number indicates a part, -10, -20 , -100 and so on would indicate an assembly.
Thanks for the info! Good stuff to know. 👍
i cant find the link for the mentioned "wire guys" in this videpo.. who is it ? any one can post a link?
That would be great if you could find a more flexible equivalent to the Heliax coaxial cable then maybe my former neighbor could turn his house this direction and say hello 😁
The last teflon you showed
Is RG217DS the TEFLON MODEL
Neon gas tube is the best choice ! But we are not allowed to use that tech anymore!
what was the link for the ITALY PL259
Okay so you just mentioned you're going to put that in your truck and test it with five or six thousand Watts.... so is that going to be five or six thousand pep.. like you always show on your bench because you never really showcase modulated RMS Bird
What did you find that's better? 😳
Nice 👍
I think they should call it RG-297....the 297 for each respective letter of the alphabet. 😊
Awesome , your the man
Obviously
Can I safely run rg400 in my mobile barefoot or maybe with 300 watts thank you for all the knowledge God bless you and your family 👍
Mobile implies short runs. Maybe not quite 6 feet short, but short nonetheless. 1/2 wave with RG400 is just a hair over 12.5 feet.
And when BBI says low power, understand that he works with some properly massive numbers. 300 watts is quite low power by contrast. Hell, even 1K is.
I have a 12 foot RG400 jumper on the way that I'll be using in my diesel wagon with a barefoot SR955. I'll let you know how it works out.
RG217 is what I've been running last few years , wasn't happy lmr stuff myself that all the so called experts in my area said was the cat's meow , as I became more experienced with radios and started doing my own homework I started using the 217 and haven't looked back , thanks for helping me along with my radio education BBI my friend another great video brother .
Very Nice. I say we name it RG-244 (RG-BIG)
I used to have "Spools" of that, My Father was a radar engineer for Lockheed Aircraft back in the 50,60 and 70's. Lockheed used to scrap stuff like that after an Aircraft rebuild and Dad would bring it home!!!
Iknow of a place in California that scraps Milspec electrical equipment,those are the places to find that Coax.
Tesco may have what you are looking for.
I get that this coax can take high power, but I'm still lost as to why you need broadcast levels of power?
If you're on CB it's a 5 watt limit, yeah running a 500w linear or a 1000w linear, yea cool, you probably won't get much attention, but 5-8000w? why on earth do you need that much power?
If you're on 27mhz the majority of people will be anywhere from 5-1000w, if you you pump out 8000w, all you will do is get heard by many people, but you can't hear them.
For this reason it's better to look at antenna design, as getting gain at the antenna is much better than trying to ram power into an antenna.
Also at 8000w the antenna itself is going to need some design considerations, making it cost more.
My choice of coax is FSJ4-50a which is a heliax, I'm never going to be running more than 400w of power through it, mostly 100w, why I chose this cable is that it not only has low loss, but it also has low noise, as the jacket is solid.
Braided jacket coax will have more noise induced by the braid, it gets worse when you have a braid on foil and even worse when the braid and foil are different metals.
This noise can get substantial over long lengths like 100ft or 30m in real numbers, the noise can rise 3-6db, remember 10w to 100w is 6db which is one s unit. So 100w to 1000w is one s unit, so if your coax has 6db of noise being introduced you're losing a whole s unit on SnR.
This is why I choose heliax, as it can help lower the SnR which is what you need to make contacts, not blasting your signal out yet you can't hear any replies.
Also heliax connectors are usually much better quality, I have Messi & Peloni ultra flex 10 in a 10m roll with PL-259 connectors, yeah great quality, but my FSJ4-50 N connectors are Chinese and of near or better quality.
The actual mobile phone tower connectors make Ham/CB type PL-259 connectors look like threaded banana plugs which is what they really are.
Any way each to their own, I really like that Boeing coax but I will never need that much heat resistance, and if I ever did, I would just step up to 7/8 heliax or larger like broadcast sites do.
I use 75 feet total of RG 400 for my set up and it rocks never a problem always had probs with LMR. LMR cant handle the watts!!!
Its 7000 volts RMS rated.
Oooooh you just said
So 217. Teflon model
sounds like Messi & Pauloni
TV cable coax rg11 and or rg6 quad shielded
Not at his power levels!
@@v12alpine you'd be surprised how much power is put through cable TV. Some cases enough to kill you
I've watched and read your coax off the gods series trying to understand where your coming from. I'm just an old swabby and radio guy. I've worked from 7 watts sideband cb to 55 million watts radar and frequencies that fry seagulls in flight.
It seems your only talking about pure power handling coax that can be used on mobile and base stations cb 27mhz.
I'm not in that world. I'm in the VHF world mainly and fiddle with 1.2 and 10ghz. LMR, TIMES MICROWAVE is the best choice for high frequencies up to 2.4ghz in hobby use. It's about containing the skin effect that's problematic in that world. It's not for power handling. It's low loss by virtue of velocity factor from better capacitance characteristics. The word you want to use of course is IMPEDANCE. My Aerial, that's the word for receive only antenna is much farther away and 7 wavelengths long in Rhomboid shape. That gets rg-11 burial grade. 75 ohm cable is less impedance and allows a very low voltage VHF UHF signal to travel with the least loss.
These are my creative solutions in my budget based on 50 years of mostly military professional and barefoot Ham radio 10 meters and higher.
It's important to clarify to your audience that you are after power handling with low impedance to 27 MHz signals. Of course RG 217, 213 and all the variants will exceed LMR.
AND...
Your friends are also blasting 5kw back to you so receive loss to micro volts is unimportant.
So for the record as you have found out, RG or Radio Guide and it's numbers is old tech retired military standards.
The new standards are C17 and folks can be informed by the excellent materials from a top tier vendor ALLIED WIRE AND CABLE at ALLIED UNIVERSITY. It's also a good place to buy cutoffs from reels at great prices. You can have them make your cable of the gods if you have the money. I'm a broke ass swabby that came looking for 500 watts of 2m amplifier to realize my dream of an EME contact. I'm building a boom mounted quad Rhomboid for 29db gain to hit that moon at moonrise-set hoping to EME. I'M SURE YOU KNOW WHAT 2M AMPS ARE GOOD AND WHOS CRAP 😉 You are the man of amps and your always right about swr and ssb. My arthritis is pretty bad like my CW. 😂
www.awcwire.com/allied-university/this-vs-that/rg213-vs-lmr400
How can I get about 40 feet of that
right.. me to
I could only imagine the price
Let's be honest RG217
Can handel 20.000++ watt on HF
So the top 0.000.000.1% in the World
Who aculey can utelize this
Even in the standard model .. well
DXENGINEERING DX400MAX is much better than LMR400. Stranded center, full braid with tape, .07 db loss per 100ft. No issues at 2k at 150 mhz.
Amazing thanks for the info… 73 everyone 043 Mr Charlie
RG217DS ptfe disel rupper
RG218 ptfe disel rubber