Flexible Coax

wa8yxm wrote:
You said "Grades" do not matter it is insulator (Which is, of course, one of the factors that constitutes grades) and then said the cheap stuff uses the lesser (higher loss) insulator.

Could not agree more. But do re-think what you said.

High Grade cable uses multiple shields,,, It uses the high grad insulator and has lower loss... Oh, by the way, My defination of HIGH GRADE is Low Loss.

"High grades" as in "Quad shielding" ACTUALLY has a HIGHER LOSS..

I would suggest you be careful about recommending quad shield as being "higher quality" since it DOES have HIGHER LOSS per ft.

RG-6 quad shield decreases the inside diameter of the center insulation and wire making it near the same loss as RG-59 with foil shield.

In what I was talking about is the MATERIALS INSIDE THE COAX.. FOAM INSULATION coax has lower loss and faster propagation, it ALSO cost more than NON FOAM insulation..

I reality for what the OP is doing there is no real reason or need for Quad shield nor is it required.

Standard single foil shield is perfectly acceptable for OTA through sat receiver usage.. That IS what was industry standard for the Big Dish "C" band systems that I installed back in the late 1980-1990s..

The ONLY difference with the big dish systems was the coax we used was twin RG-6, plus 12ga motor wires which also included position sensor wires and polarizer wires all in a flat cable.. That cable was also frequency swept above 2ghz to insure lowest loss possible..

When our runs exceeded 200 ft we switched to individual RG-11 along with individual motor/polarizer wires.. Talk about stiff, RG-11 is about 1/2" in diameter..

Pick you poison..

You can't have your cake and eat it too..