BACKGROUND:
Here is a "snake" of very nice, high quality (but unmarked) small diameter coaxial cable intended for low level RF OR analog audio hard wired signal routing. For RF use we used this cable 'comfortably' up to the UHF frequency spectrum. In the professional audio industry you come across this type of snake all the time but not so often with RF industry signal routing, unless you are dealing with communications equipment that has a large number of module interconnects. I have decided to leave this as a "snake" but it is very easy to dismantle the snake so you end up with individual lengths of this coax to suit the new owner's purposes.
"Looks and feels" great, this snake was supplied by the equipment manufacturer a "long time ago" in conjunction with some very specialised USA comms gear (running at various frequencies up to a maximum of around 460Mhz, the Australian UHF commercial user frequencies. We also found that this same cable was an excellent interconnect cable for hard wired analog audio signal routing/interconnects and used it with some studio analog audio modules (hard wired interconnects not patchbay use)
UNBRANDED - Coaxial cable
Made in USA (our supplier manufactured this cable in the country of origin, USA)
For RF purposes, 50 Ohm nominal impedance
Very small diameter jacket, 2.5mm
Very flexible (cabling is easy to physically route inside equipment)
Snake configuration, meaning that there are 12 separate coaxial cables interlaced with each other and a central cotton/fibre glass "thread" running most of the length
Maximum continous length 6m (of any single cable length)
Some "take off" points at each end of the snake so this means that the "real" snake length, end to end is 6m long with 7 cables of the 12 are 6 metres in length
with another 5 cables "branching" off at either end of the snake, so they are shorter, a minimum 5 metre for any of these lengths - not the full 6 metre length
NO end connectors
NO jacket markings at all
For RF purposes, 50 Ohm impedance
Single shield, very tight braid (high coverage)
Similar in size and construction to RG-174 (smaller jacket than RG-174 although larger jacket than RG-178)
DIMENSIONS:
0.3mm solid copper centre conductor
1.4mm Injected foam PE insulation/dielectric
1.9mm tinned copper braid shielding diameter
2.5mm Black PVC (soft) outer jacket
TESTING:
I was curious about the capacitance of this cable and have measured it as 86pF per metre (517pF over the full 6 metres)
For RF purposes I no longer have suitable test equipment so I could not "sweep" the coax and determine uppermost useable frequencies/attenuation etc
COSMETIC CONDITION:
Absolutely clean and UNUSED
This snake was excess to the installation and stored in the original suppliers box, in our workshops. Unfortunately the specification sheets were no longer with the cable so I cannot blurt out the manufacturers stated technical specifications!
I have stripped back the jacket for my capacitance test above though - just one length has been stripped back a little
Internally the braided shield is bright and shiny - absolutely no moisture ingress!
Coaxial jacket is completely undamaged - no kinks, cuts or any other damage.
Yes, considering the amount of coaxial cable here, this is an extremely low price for what is effectively around 70 metres of very good quality coaxial cable but I certainly have no further use for this cable and do not wish it to be buried at the local tip poisoning our environment!
