Webro WF100 10 m Low Loss Digital Satellite Coax Cable with 10 Clips - black

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I have also included modern CT100, PF100 and NX100 as almost equally good to WF100. To be honest they are so similar I wouldn’t worry if you have one instead of the other. When installing a coaxial cable, it is imperative at that the centre conductor and the cable braid and centre never touch, even one single strand of the cable braid touching the centre conductor will create a cable short and could result in loss of TV signal altogether. This definitely will happen where line power is present which could be powering your satellite dish, amplifiers and magic eyes. As the dielectric inside a coax cable is to primarily stop the conductors touching this must made from a non-conductive substance with insulating properties. This is most commonly a foam filled substance,but some coax cable types use a PVC/ air where the PVC keeps an air separation.The dielectric also helps define the impedance of the coaxial cable, so it is also carefully keeping the correct distance between conductors. For this reason,it is important not to squash the cable at terminations or kink the cable when installing it.

The next cable size above is 165 coaxial cable. I’m sure you know where I’m going from here so I’m not going to list anymore coaxial cable sizes, although there are more. The reason being when you get higher it would be more suitable to install fibre optic cabling instead. 1.65mm cable is pretty much used exclusively in communal TV system and CATV systems. It has a signal loss of around 2dB at the highest frequency. With cables this size and above it can even be difficult to get crimp on plugs to fit well so I would advise installing compression plugs instead. Coaxial cables are suitable for many applications, including low power video, video signal, and they are also used in high frequency transmission, especially for transmitters and receivers, computers, radio and TV transmissions.

I would however be very wary of called branded or marketed as “RG6” as the modern equivalent is far inferior in terms of performance. It is cheap to buy which is why some people use it. It has a solid copper clad steel centre conductor with a foam filled dielectric and aluminium. Finally, we get to the part of the blog where I actually recommend cable types for TV systems. I’m just going to bunch a whole bunch of cables here as they’re essentially the same cable made by different manufacturers.

To smallest of all the coaxial cable sizes is 0.65mm cable.This is most commonly used in a pair to form “shotgun” satellite cable for Sky+,Sky Q, Freesat+ and other satellite PVR’s which require two separate LNB connections. Being the smallest of cable sizes, it should only be used for short cable lengths, nothing really above 25m. It will typically lose around 5dB at the highest used frequency every 10m. In terms of electrical performance there are some differences. The DC resistance is higher, as is the signal loss (attenuation) which gets worse as the frequency increases, but all cables have losses. The thing is though, for fairly short runs of under 20m, you'd be hard-pressed to notice any real difference.

If you’re going to be installing lots of internal coaxial cabling you should install LSZH coaxial cabling. LSZH stands for Low Smoke Zero Halogen which means in the event of fire the toxic fumes given off from this type of cable is far less than other types of coaxial cabling intended for outside use. There is actually a triple screened coaxial cable on the market called HD100. The extra screen is on top of the cable braid. Although the performance on this cable is superior, I personally think that this is overkill and not worth the extra expense. I’m not the only one as the popularity of this cable type hasn’t really caught on. There are different types of dielectric materials used for coaxial cabling. The most common are foam filled (my preference) and air spaced, which uses plastic dialectic to maintain the separation between conductors, a common type of the latter is also called honeycomb cable. Although both types work well in terms of performance foam is becoming the norm as it doesn’t kink as easy as the air-spaced cabling.