Coax type for 6m

[fogdog]

I'm putting up a 6m jpole for local rag chew soon, and I need some good coax. I'm ready to get a 50' section of Lmr-400. I know it works good on vhf/uhf, but is it overkill?
What do you 6m Guru's use?
I'm listening

 

[BJ radionut]

50ft run LMR400 will be just fine!

 

[w9cll]

LMR400 is fine

 

[fogdog]

sounds good!

 

[kopcicle]

 

[The DB]

Instead of answering the question asked people jump straight to 'its fine'. While true, this doesn't answer the question that was asked.

Is it overkill to run 50 feet of LMR-400 at 6 meters frequencies? Yes. But then LMR-400 is overkill most of the time it is used...

Any quality half inch diameter coax will work fine for your needs, and honestly, if it were a portable setup or one that required some fairly sharp coax turns between the radio and antenna I wouldn't hesitate to run even smaller coax than that. You won't notice any difference between LMR-400 and, say, Belden 8215 (RG-213).


The DB

 

[fogdog]

Instead of answering the question asked people jump straight to 'its fine'. While true, this doesn't answer the question that was asked.

Is it overkill to run 50 feet of LMR-400 at 6 meters frequencies? Yes. But then LMR-400 is overkill most of the time it is used...

Any quality half inch diameter coax will work fine for your needs, and honestly, if it were a portable setup or one that required some fairly sharp coax turns between the radio and antenna I wouldn't hesitate to run even smaller coax than that. You won't notice any difference between LMR-400 and, say, Belden 8215 (RG-213).

thanks for the input DB. It's a base install. Once up, I hope it stays up for awhile. Coax will go from antenna to multi switch. 73

The DB

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

My general answer is to use the best quality cable you are willing to spend the money for when it comes to 6m and up. On HF it's not so important to worry about losses but at 6m and up losses can be significant with small cheap cable. 50 ft. of LMR-400 will have about 0.5 dB loss at 6m which is great. My target is 1 dB per hundred feet if at all possible and that fits right in with that. Having been in broadcasting many years ago I was able to acquire several hundred feet of LDF4-50 and that is what I use for everything from HF to 70cm. My cable runs will be about 160 feet end to end. that works out to about 0.75 dB on 6m, 1.3 dB on 2m and 2.3 dB on 70 cm which I am quite happy with.

 

[fogdog]

I've got the LMR-400 on the way. Thanks everybody for the info.

 

[Mudfoot]

If I had 400, I'd use it. If saving $, LMR-240 would be good for a 50' run.

Still:

Good coax ain't cheap. Cheep coax ain't good.