Re: [IRCA] Cable work

["Craig Healy" <bubba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I may have some time Monday morning.  If the weather is OK, I can do that
> test.  I'm curious to see the results.  If it works, then twenty bucks
work
> of chicken wire is a whole lot cheaper than some of these other
> possibilities.  We shall see..

The chicken wire made no difference at all.  Grounding it, connecting it to
the cable junctions, nada.   Oh well..

Other tests today:

1.  I made two baluns to try using two parallel lengths of coax in a
balanced fashion.  The baluns were really nothing more that two 3db 180
degree splitter/combiners.  This configuration was no better than a single
run of the same cable.  I will be trying this again, using different cable.
However, it probably won't be all that useful.

2.  I made another RJ-45 ethernet to 50 ohm BNC balun.  Did another test of
the CAT5 ethernet cable.  By using the balun, and just laying the wire out
unterminated, local WSKO-790 showed up as an S-8.  With the RG-58, it comes
in better than S9+20.  This is a significant improvement.  I tried putting
the RJ-45 100 ohm termination on the end.  Seemed to drop to a hair under
S-8 on WSKO.  I then used the second balun, and connected that to the
shielded dummy load.  Signal went up about hald an S-unit.  Still, that's
way below either the RG-58 or RG-6 coax I've tried.

So far, the CAT5 ethernet cable is the best I've tried by a good margin.
Fortunately, that's really cheap stuff and very easy to work with.

Next effort with that is to try to make up a sleeve choke as Rick Kunath has
described.  Grounding of CAT5 isn't practical.  I may also try grounding
individual conductors within the CAT5.  I'm only using the blue/blue-white
pair.  The other three pairs are not connected to anything.

Craig Healy
Providence, RI

_______________________________________________
IRCA mailing list
IRCA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca

Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers

For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org

To Post a message: irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx