best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

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best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by WARLOCK »

what would be a good coax to use for a watson white stick antenna for the 2mt/70cmt bands please .???
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Andy »

It's a matter of balancing the length of run with how much loss you can tolerate vs how difficult the cable is to work with. Thin, easy-bending coaxes like RG58 are convenient but are lossy, especially at UHF.
Stuff like Aircell 5 or 7 are better but less floppy. Better still are RG213 and ECO10. If you feel like getting your Bullworker out and coming over all butch, ECO15.
Horses for courses. Don't forget that 7mm cables need special-sized plugs, so make sure you order those at the same time.

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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Buick Mackane »

I'd bung RG8 on it and forget about it.
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Auldgeek »

For me, an absolute minimum of RG-213 and the decent military spec stuff. RG214 gets you double screened.
Anything less will introduce too much loss on both TK/RX

I know it's semi rigid but Westflex W103 is my cable of choice for anything between 70Mhz-440Mhz.
You will need special Plugs but you can file down the centre conductor so that you can use standard connectors.
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by LeakyFeeder »

Heliax..end of.. if your prepared to ask around mil surplus outlets u will find some at surprisingly decent prices..

213/214 is ok for short runs but the best is Heliax
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by paulears »

..... and you could just put guy ropes on it and forget about a pole!
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Auldgeek »

LeakyFeeder wrote:Heliax..end of.. if your prepared to ask around mil surplus outlets u will find some at surprisingly decent prices..

213/214 is ok for short runs but the best is Heliax
Hardline is a bit over the top imho, especially for use with a colinear. The OP is probably going to be nattering on FM simplex and repeaters.

Sure, for serious weak signal ssb/cw work at these frequencies, LDF450/550 should be seriously considered but I think so long as we are not talking many 10s of metres, a decent 213/214 would be ok and W103 or equivalent semi rigid air spaced feeder would be ideal.
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by paulears »

In a domestic installation, any form of inflexible cable is going to be problematic to manage. Fine for towers, but impractical for houses! I got given 4 lengths of 20m of 450 from a local emergency service tower. What a pain to remove, transport and store, let alone use! I eventually sold it for a small amount to get rid of it!
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Auldgeek »

I used to do a lot of VHF/UHF weak signal operating and also had a decent Satellite setup (23 & 13cms) and I used LDF-450 for these installations but even on the towers, I had to drop down to Westflex for the last run between the masthead preamps, rotators and the antennas and even at the shack end, I had to drop back down to Westflex. It's fantastic feeder but a pain to live with.
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Sylad »

Eccoflex 10 gets my vote & what i use.
If antenna not above a rotator westflex 103 is good value.
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by oh5nxo »

There was an article in an old 73 mag, describing a "GP on a pole" concoction, where the pole made double duty as the feedline. GP whip and the center wire were one long piece. Cannot remember the details or the magazine year/month. 1cm inside 1inch is close to 50 ohms, oddly. Tempting idea...

Probably not very easily applicable to a white stick :)
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by Andy »

kilimax wrote:I used to do a lot of VHF/UHF weak signal operating and also had a decent Satellite setup (23 & 13cms) and I used LDF-450 for these installations but even on the towers, I had to drop down to Westflex for the last run between the masthead preamps, rotators and the antennas and even at the shack end, I had to drop back down to Westflex. It's fantastic feeder but a pain to live with.
All that changing (with the connectors etc) probably made the system worse than using a straight run of W103! I agree with kilimax, Heliax is way over the top for what the OP wants to do. Anyone getting proper serious about the last dB of signal would be using a yagi and mastheads, not a generic white stick.
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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by oh5nxo »

The article I had in mind is in "73" October 1974, page 77, by VK2BAU. http://archive.org/search.php?query=col ... agazine%22 finds it. It was not quite what I remembered it to be, a mobile construction instead of a base antenna.

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Re: best coax for 2Mt/70Cmt white stick antenna ???

Post by paulears »

Keep in mind that 75Ohm distribution was very popular in the seventies for hams and commercial users. A dipole performs pretty much the same on 50 and 75Ohm systems, so don't get sidelined into thinking that 75 Ohms is the key - it's just what was popular back then.

That article actually says very little, apart from pointing you to sleeve dipoles and 1.4 wave ground plane designs. The notion of using the support tube as the sleeve is part of many designs - so a bit of reading will make this obvious. So interesting historical reading, but a re-telling of modern practice too.
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