Steve wrote:
This is off topic, but I'm going to ask it anyway...

I'm don't have a lot of technical expertise and I'm wondering how one
determines what kind of coax to use as a feedline. I currently have
about 50 feet of fairly thin (RG174) coax that I'm using to feed an
outdoor active antenna that's mounted on the fire escape outside my
window. I'm thinking about mounting the antenna on the roof of my
apartment building and suspect 50 ft of feed line might just be enough
to allow me to do that. However, a friend of mine told me that 50 ft
of RG174 is going to allow too much signal loss. So, there you have my
first question: Is 50 ft of RG174 coax a bad feedline?

The second question is this. My friend seemed to think that the 50 ft
run to my roof would result in greater signal loss than the much
shorter run to my fire escape, even though we're talking about 50 ft
of coax either way. This didn't make sense to me. 50 ft of coax is 50
ft of coax, it seems to me, whether it's coiled and leading just
outside my window or straight and leading all the way up to the roof.
Am I wrong about this?

Steve


I'd prefer a thicker coax for physical strength, but the loss on 50 feet
isn't going to be meaningful, particularly since the signal will be
amplified before it hits the coax.

I've got about 350 feet of a Belden variation of RG58 on my primary
antenna, and it's fine even when I switch out the remote amp.

Putting your antenna on the roof should help get it away from electrical
noise - even if you had to switch to 100 feet of coax, it would probably
be a very good thing.

The down side is putting it on the roof also makes it more likely to get
damaged by lightning.