On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 23:50:19 +0100, PJ wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 21:48:58 +0100, tony sayer wrote
(in message ):

Cable very simple, CT100 the satellite stuff excellent and far better
than the usual low loss string as sold in the sheds use this for
anything..

Thank you for your informative reply. I'm sure I'll have more questions but
for now just this.

At my local Maplins they have Satellite TV Cable FT100 in 100m roll at 24.99
pounds sterling. Is this the same as CT100?

It might or might not be. CT100 has a defined construction and RF
specification. Various other cables purport to be the same and may
or may not be. Some of the cheap ones sold as satellite cable may
have inferior screening or mechanical construction or may have worse
than spec. losses at high frequencies.

Whether this particular cable is OK is hard to know. To be able to
tell that,you would need to know the losses at various frequencies and
compare them to the real thing and Maplin don't seem to publish that
data. As a comparison, RS have a Raydex CT100 for £44 for 100m and
CPC have one for £19.60 for 50m - i.e. almost twice the Maplin price.
Both of these appear to follow the official specs.



Also, they have Satellite Cable FT125 in 100m roll at 59.99 pounds sterling.
Any idea what that is?

This sounds like a copy of CT125, basically a lower loss cable. Again
you would pay just under twice Maplin prices for the official stuff.
The cable diameter is about 8mm rather than 6mm.


..andy

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