In article , Paul Burridge
writes:

Let's say I'm trouble-shooting a circuit board with several stages of
RF amplification in addition to a primary source in the form of a
VCXO. I'd like to be able to bypass certain parts of the signal path
by the use of a jumper wire. This wire may need to be up to 4 inches
in length to have sufficient reach between stages. Can anyone see a
problem with this? I mean, rather than a single wire, should I use
some sort of grounded outer lead like coax to carry the signal?

Paul, offhand I'd say no problem since I've done that on the bench
many a time from LF on up to low UHF. The waveform may not
be optimum but "quick check" circuit jumpering should not be a
source of worry. Not at 4" length.

I'll have to add that my personal experience is based on circuit
boards (including breadboards of the universal kind) all had fairly
good ground planes ("earthed" planes, heh heh).

Digital circuits have rather high frequency content, must have to
carry very fast edge-transient-time signals. I've done a lot of
one-shot applications that were not-yet-formalized production
designs using 4 1/2" square Douglas Electronic circuit cards*
using #26 insulated wires snaking around the card containing up
to 16 DIPs. Fast revisions of wiring and package connections were
done without any problems.

* Douglas Electronics has excellent quality prototype cards but
they are also quite expensive, I'd say too costly for amateur home-
brewing at $15+ or so now.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person