Custom Cables

[Volfirefighter]

Can someone recommend a good site for ordering LMR400 and/or LMR600 with custom connectors and lengths? Thanks in advance.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

Try either www.waltel.com or www.therfc.com.

 

[kb2vxa]

Order the cable, order the connectors, make it yourself and save your money. Custom assemblies cost SO much more than stock! Oh, don't forget the soldering iron.

 

[brwkem]

Arent you better off letting a master put on connectors with the LMR cable? From what Ive read it can be tricky and is best left to those with plenty of experience with that cable and the connectos for that cable.

 

[Al42]

Arent you better off letting a master put on connectors with the LMR cable? From what Ive read it can be tricky and is best left to those with plenty of experience with that cable and the connectos for that cable.

Yes it's probably better to let someone who was born knowing how to do the job do it. Oh!

 

[KC4ZEX]

Personally unless i was going to need more than 90 Ft. or so I would go with 9913. For scanning purposes its not going to help that much for the considerable extra expense. You can get it for about 60 some cents a ft. from Ham station and a few other places they call it super flex. If you really want the LM 400 or 600 go to Cable Experts 1-800 828-3340. or Texas Towers 1 800 272-3467

 

[consys]

Cable Experts mentioned above has been good to me. If I remeber it correctly, I think it was $8 for "N" connectors installed on LMR-400. I'm fairly good at installing them without the special tools, but it takes 15-20 min each end if I do it right the first time or don't melt anything. Life is to short not to spend the 8$ IMHO.

 

[Volfirefighter]

The scantenna has a 300 ohm connection for the lead wire. Are there adapters to go from an N-type connector to this antenna or should I get the LMR with an F-type connector on the antenna end?

And, about the scanner end. Would it be prudent to secure the LMR to the back of my desk and get a small 2 ft. jumper of a thinner coax to go from the LMR to the scanner so as to relieve stress on the scanner's BNC connector? What type of loss would I be looking at in a 2 ft. jumper of say RG6 along with the appropriate adapters?

 

[consys]

I use some RG-58 jumpers to go from LMR-400 and RG-8 at home. At work we do it also with our data radios (902-928Mhz), LMR-400 or 600 to a cabinet, then a 3 foot flexible coax inside- RG-192 comes to mind but I can't remeber the cable #for sure.

Anyway, the losses doing this are negligable. A cable with 14db loss per 100 feet at 800Mhz is only 0.28 db loss at 2 feet. Kill off another 0.1 or 0.2 with an adapter and my ears can't hear the difference.

We get the jumpers with the correct connector on each so adapers are not required at work, but at home I don't hesitate to use an adapter if I need to.