What are those wire designations and what do they indicate?

[Numb-nuts 1]

When buying RG59 cable, I always notice that there are a few designations after such as RG59-B/U or A/U or C/U or U

Does anyone know where I can see what the differences between these are. I am sure they must have some significance that would refer to their composition, but what?

 

I have been trying very hard to buy at a good price an RG59 with a solid copper core. Most that I can find have a solid core but it turns out to be copper coated steel YUK. (Poor conductor and brittle)

I am not so concerned about the braid but it would be nice to have both with as much copper content as possible.

Typically, I can find this but it's about 5 times the price. This really irritates me, someone somewhere in the UK must sell good stuff at a reasonable price?

[myplace46 0]

Are you looking for straight RG59 or 59 Siamese?

not sure myself regarding the letter code but I can tell you where I got my 500' roll for $89usd.

if that will help.

[Numb-nuts 1]

No I am just trying to understand the designations and what I am buying wether it be single coax or siamese cable.

I know that some suppliers quote CCA which is short for copper coated aluminium (aluminum) for the braid/shielding.

This would be acceptable if the center is solid copper and not copper coated steel

 

Do you know a good cheap supplier in the UK?

[fa chris 0]

The US military named "RG-59/u". The R stands for "Radio Frequency" because it's meant for transporting RF signals, the G stands for "Government", 59 was just a sequential number with no meaning behind it other than there are 58 other coax cable specifications before it (like RG-6), and the "/U" just means universal specification.

 

Put it all together and you have the common name RG-59/u which today has no real meaning behind it, just the common name for a common cable manufactured to a common specification (it's no longer tied to the US military).

 

The A/B/C means there is an updated or modified specification the cable was manufactured too, so RG-59c/u was manufactured to a newer spec than RG-59a/u.

 

None of it's important for us, just find RG-59x/xx and you'll be fine. It's all coax, it all terminates the same, it'll all work for cctv. Most people seem to drop the "u" at end nowadays too.

[Soundy 1]

The US military named "RG-59/u". The R stands for "Radio Frequency" because it's meant for transporting RF signals, the G stands for "Government", 59 was just a sequential number with no meaning behind it other than there are 58 other coax cable specifications before it (like RG-6), and the "/U" just means universal specification.

 

Put it all together and you have the common name RG-59/u which today has no real meaning behind it, just the common name for a common cable manufactured to a common specification (it's no longer tied to the US military).

Sure it is - it's still got that silly, obviously-military-inspired name

[fa chris 0]

Well there's always that.

 

Just because it's labeled RG-59/u doesn't mean it's manufactured to military specs anymore though. I'm sure they have an all new longer, equally archaic name for whatever cable they designate as RG-59/u which they have a specification for manufacturing.

[SportPlumber 0]

The steel core is usually a CATV variety. While the solid copper core tends to be a "precision" cable that is designed for higher bandwidth applications such as HD-SDI. Typically 1.5 or 3.0 Gb/s. SMPTE 292 and 424.

 

Probably overkill for analog video. There is a great deal of information on the Belden site.

http://www.belden.com

 

Belden and Gepco are thought to be the standard in Broadcast, but they are not cheap.