CHINESE COAX

[KL7OF]

I need to purchase coax for a 7 mHz antenna feed...(400 ft long, amateur power levels....)
I am here asking if anyone has REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE with the chinese coax that is the COPY of LMR 400...There are several brands available,   The chinese coax price is about half that of the USA made coax...I know you get what you pay for in most cases....SO   I would like to hear from anyone that has had the chinese 400 coax in use for a while....How long have you been using it?  Is it buried or exposed to the sun?   How long a run do you have?  What power are you running? Have you had any problems?  Thanks .....Steve

[WBear2GCR]

IF you can work it, many cable TV companies have a warehouse full of left-over sections of 75ohm hardline from
installs. If you can figure out/find out WHERE that is, and you can do some slick talk, you may well be able to walk out
with a bunch of rolls of 200+plus 1/2" and BIGGER hardline.

I was.

That was a decade or so back, and there may be less of it out there.
But I could have gotten all that I wanted, and this was from not one of the bigger cable TV companies.
It happened that I came across the warehouse about 7mi from the QTH and schmoozed the guy who had
the job of sitting there all day with what was many thousands of floor square footage worth of the stuff.

The other places that they end up at is commercial recycling companies, who would be happy to sell it to you
at aluminum scrap prices.

1" run out 400ft will have a fraction of the loss of coax. Fwiw.

                                                 _-_-

(the other thing to look for is the now old school yellow or orange "hard" Ethernet coax - the stuff that was
used with "vampire taps" back in the day - it's triple shielded, 50 ohms, low loss, and was designed by a friend
who is an avid ham! I used to see that show up at hamfests quite often.)

[WA2SQQ]

Yup, my local metal scrap yard had a few hundred feet of 7/8" and 1 5/8 Andrews cable. I get all my dipole wire there, about 1/2 of what Home Depot / Lowes charges. I saw some of the Chginese stuff. It felt much lighter and was more flexible than equivalent US cable. Too much cheap cable out there.

I still use 30+ year old original Belden 9913, with the spiral wrap inside. What they call 9913 today is no where near as good.