Nice. Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed your video. For some reason, I end up, "upping" to the next best thing when I have to purchase gear for my shack. Years of pinching pennies has most likely cost me more in the long run. LMR- 400 for my VHF, and I went with RG-8u for my HF feed line... Never used those crimp styled connectors. Gonna have to check those out sometime. I need a few more jumpers so I guess I'll take your advice and order them like you did. Thanks. 73s de KF4LBG, Larry in North Florida...
Good evening sir and thanks for message, have great holiday and good luck on the set up, I like your plan LMR-400 for VHF and RG8u for the HF. I ended up doing LMR400 on my HF with Diamond CP-610 been pretty happy with it. Thanks again let me know if there is anything I can help with 73
Good to see someone doing some testing for their selves. I have been a ham for over 50 years and kept up a repeater for about 40. When the run is only 25 feet I would use rg-8x from a known good source. Even that would not be noticed over the loss in 25 feet of coax. While the instruments and tables show some difference I can tell from experience that the . half of a db is not going to be noticed in any common situation. It may be noticed in some of the more uncommon modes like moon bounce . Often more loss in the coax the better the SWR will look at the transmitter end. With a few hundred feet of rg58 even open or shorted on the far end will show almost no swr.
Great video. A lot of thought has to go into coax. One size doesn't necessarily fit all, but it's rarely saving anything going with Amazon coax and connectors. I tried their compression PL259s and didn't like them, especially the RG8X ones. I also have noticed RG8X doesn't typically last long in the elements. Never had any issues with the LMR400 clone. Now I'm using RG8U from Amazon (made by Alpha Distributors) with Amphenol's installed for a 50 ft run. Time will tell. I no longer like the idea of anything longer than a jumper for RG8X. Lesson: coax can be our weakest link without really realizing it.
I wonder if the SWR is the same on the LMR setup and the RG setup. The .1 difference in reading is probably because the 8U has more loss. That loss appears as a lower SWR. So, your radiated power off the antenna for the 8U is perhaps lower than you think? Not by much... Not enough to matter. But interesting to consider.
Good point, lately I've used DX Engineering LMR400 50 Foot with the connectors. They seem to have good quality - thanks again for the comment something to consider 73 hope to catch you on the air
That was a great science experiment for sure... but isn't it interesting - in the end you didn't have a problem, 23 watts or 24 watts out of 25 watts is so negligible that it's a practical tie. No issue with the original setup. Now if you run 70cm I thin you will find a much bigger loss
The slightly higher SWR on LMR 400 is likely due to its lower loss. Lower SWR doesn't better in this case. The SWR you measured was SWR at the Radio some of the return signal is lost. The results in this instance, shows a marginal difference.
Nice.
Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed your video. For some reason, I end up, "upping" to the next best thing when I have to purchase gear for my shack. Years of pinching pennies has most likely cost me more in the long run. LMR- 400 for my VHF, and I went with RG-8u for my HF feed line... Never used those crimp styled connectors. Gonna have to check those out sometime. I need a few more jumpers so I guess I'll take your advice and order them like you did. Thanks.
73s de KF4LBG, Larry in North Florida...
Good evening sir and thanks for message, have great holiday and good luck on the set up, I like your plan LMR-400 for VHF and RG8u for the HF. I ended up doing LMR400 on my HF with Diamond CP-610 been pretty happy with it. Thanks again let me know if there is anything I can help with 73
Good to see someone doing some testing for their selves. I have been a ham for over 50 years and kept up a repeater for about 40. When the run is only 25 feet I would use rg-8x from a known good source. Even that would not be noticed over the loss in 25 feet of coax. While the instruments and tables show some difference I can tell from experience that the . half of a db is not going to be noticed in any common situation. It may be noticed in some of the more uncommon modes like moon bounce .
Often more loss in the coax the better the SWR will look at the transmitter end. With a few hundred feet of rg58 even open or shorted on the far end will show almost no swr.
Thank you sir, yeah I'm learning and share all the things I learn to help HAM thanks for the message 73 from KI5JUF
Great video. A lot of thought has to go into coax. One size doesn't necessarily fit all, but it's rarely saving anything going with Amazon coax and connectors. I tried their compression PL259s and didn't like them, especially the RG8X ones. I also have noticed RG8X doesn't typically last long in the elements. Never had any issues with the LMR400 clone. Now I'm using RG8U from Amazon (made by Alpha Distributors) with Amphenol's installed for a 50 ft run. Time will tell. I no longer like the idea of anything longer than a jumper for RG8X. Lesson: coax can be our weakest link without really realizing it.
Thanks for the information. KE2AUM 👍📡
Good evening Luis, thanks for the message and let me know if there's anything you need from me, 73 and good luck on you journey!!!
I wonder if the SWR is the same on the LMR setup and the RG setup. The .1 difference in reading is probably because the 8U has more loss. That loss appears as a lower SWR. So, your radiated power off the antenna for the 8U is perhaps lower than you think? Not by much... Not enough to matter. But interesting to consider.
Good point, lately I've used DX Engineering LMR400 50 Foot with the connectors. They seem to have good quality - thanks again for the comment something to consider 73 hope to catch you on the air
That was a great science experiment for sure... but isn't it interesting - in the end you didn't have a problem, 23 watts or 24 watts out of 25 watts is so negligible that it's a practical tie. No issue with the original setup. Now if you run 70cm I thin you will find a much bigger loss
The slightly higher SWR on LMR 400 is likely due to its lower loss. Lower SWR doesn't better in this case. The SWR you measured was SWR at the Radio some of the return signal is lost. The results in this instance, shows a marginal difference.
Good evening sir and thanks for the message, thanks for the information I appreciate it very much, 73 and hope to catch you on the air