Can I ask if your a radio tech or just working as an installer there on the vehicles.
Not that I am being picky, but there is no coax cable made that I know of, in the 45 plus years
that I have been working with radios, that uses steel for it's construction. I believe you are
calling the copper braid that is plated in tin or silver to be the steel.
Second, the black outer jacket on the coax cable is not rubber. Again, to the best of my
years of working with coax cable, rubber has not been used for the outer jacket. There are a
number of different materials used, but it is not rubber. Most coax cables today use some
sort of PVC for the outer jacket. What you call plastic tubing is really polyethylene. You
will see a sort of clear or cloudy form of it and another is a foam form. Depends on the
frequency use of the coax cable and how the company decided to make it.
The higher the operating frequency, the better quality coax cable is required due to the
insertion loss of the coax. You can see the difference in the cable construction mainly
in the center conductor. The better higher frequency coax cables have started to use
a solid center conductor. The shield on this cable has also changed with the higher
frequency cables. generally you will see some form of double shielding used. Normally
this is with the use of an aluminum foil wrap with the copper, tinned braid over the foil.
You can get a better picture of the different coax cable types by taking a look at the following
site:
http://www.larsen-antennas.com/docfi...heets/Coax.pdf
Here is a good picture and description of some of the different types of cables used. The
color of the outer jacket is normally black, but you can get some of the coax cables in
white.
Depending on who makes the radio, the connectors run from a norm of a "mini UHF" on most
of the newer Motorola radios to type "N" on EF Johnson. Then you have Kenwood, ICOM,
Tait and a number of others that can use the old work horse "PL-259" UHF style connector
and maybe even some "TNC" or "BNC" coax connectors.
Many of the coax connectors have migrated to the crimp style on the outer shield to speed up
installation. I still like to solder the center pin to my coax installs. There are too many different
brands and versions to have to fight trying to find the right crimp tool for the center conductor.
Hope this helps you in the future in trying to describe the different types of coax cables.
Jim
Quote:
Originally Posted by cvpiradio
For anyone interested here I am providing the type of coax cable used with the CSP 800 MHz mobile radios. This cable information I got from one of their old cars we just got at my job. The print on the outside of the cable reads:
Larsen DIGI SHIELD UD COAX PREMIUM BELDEN 8240/DS YR29741 2HC
It has a black rubber outer cable cover and a solid copper center conductor wire. It also has the usual plastic tubing around the center conductor and steel braiding above that. Next it has this aluminum or steel foil covering above the steel braiding. It also has the usual NMO Mount with either a nickel finish or stainless steel finish over the brass. Anyway it has a silver appearance to it and not the usual brass color to it. The radio connector was cut off but from past experience with their old cars they use mini-UHF connectors. I remember their earlier cars that first started getting the new radios had white teflon cable jacket with a braided center conductor wire with no extra shielding above the steel braiding. Those also had brass NMO Mounts at the time as well.
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CSP mobile ant. cable info.
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