Is RG/6 center conductor copperweld?

the only way to tell is to take a sample and strip it down. some rg-6 is copper covered steel, some is solid copper.

The RG (Radio Guide) specs are mo longer used by military. Yes, aluminum shielded RG 6 and RG-59 both used copperweld center conductors for two reasons. the aluminum shield is weak, and tears if the wire stretches. It also helps to limit the bending radius. I used to have some "RG-6 headend cable" which had a double copper braid, and a silver plated, solid copper center conductor. It was barely usable on US Ch 12 at 218 MHZ, but its claim only to fame was it had lower radiation or signal ingression problems than the standard all copper, single braid version.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Easy enough to find out- Take a magnet with you! Years ago, had to deal with wire thieves, and they could have saved US all, a lot of trouble, IF they had done that! They even stole "Duplex" wire, copperweld, that wouldn't even burn the insulation off-- and was WORTHLESS (unless you needed a #14 power cord, 500 hundred feet long)! MOST Telephone carriers, didnt even like that stuff (and they topped out at around 40 KHz!! Jim NN7K

Tim Sh> Is the center conductor of the el-cheapo RG-6 found in home

I'd be a little suspicious of el cheapo cable with copper plated steel center conductor. I'd be surprised if it was Copperweld, which has a very thick copper coating. Copper plating thickness would be a logical place for cost-conscious vendors to skimp.

An extra thin layer of copper wouldn't hurt at VHF and above, but it could really be a killer at HF, where significant current could flow in the steel. (Steel is extra lossy at RF because its permeability further reduces the skin depth by a large factor.) I'd definitely measure the loss if I intended to use it at HF.

Of course, many (or most) amateurs would probably be pleased by the wide bandwidth and low SWR and noise level they'd get with lossy cable.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

I did the refrigerator magnet test on several pieces of RG6, and the only one that appears to be copperweld, for sure, was marked as 2300 MHz Digital Satellite Cable. It is on my UHF TV antenna, and I think sold as RCA brand.

Tam/WB2TT

Tim -

Belden made a very popular RG-6/U quad shield coax (7199?) that was a steel center conductor with a copper flashed overlay. Worked fine -- rated up to 1 GHz.

The last 1000' spool that I ordered was a newer cable (solid copper center conductor) and good to 2 GHz.

w9gb

there is NO mil spec for RG6.. (nor for RG8, RG213, etc.) Those specs (for PVC insulated cables) were abondoned 20 odd years ago. (and in any case, would more properly be something like MIL-C-17/74C for RG213 or MIL-C-17/2 for RG6)

As it happens MIL-C-17/2 does call out copperweld and double shield, so something purporting to be RG6 would have a copperweld center conductor.

The new replacement would be MIL-C-17/180-00001, which has a crosslinked polyolefin jacket and no "RG" number, double shield, but not copperweld center. (at least as of MIl-C-17G, 1990)

What you can get is "RG-6 type" or "similar to what used to be RG-6", etc.

skin depth in copper at 1 MHz is about 2.6 mils( thousandths of an inch). At 10 MHz, 0.8 mils (goes as the square root of frequency)

AWG18 is about 40 mils in diameter. If the copper thickness were, say,

3 or 4 skin depths.. call it 4-10 mils, almost all the current is carried in copper.

Copper clad steel is usually specified as a percentage of conductivity of pure copper (in AC powerline applications, for instance) as say, 40%. If we make the assumption that steel is an insulator, 40% CCS would have 40% of the cross sectional area.. that would mean the cladding is about 11% of the overall diameter. Using AWG18 as an example, 11% of 40 mils is about 4 mils, so certainly at higher HF frequencies, 40% CCS would be pretty close to pure copper. even 20% CCS (which would have cladding about half the thickness of 40%) wouldn't be all that lossy.

At the VHF and higher frequencies typically used for 75 ohm coax, a very thin cladding would be as good as solid copper.

(I note that there is coax with silver plated stainless steel as the center conductor and shield for microwaves in cryogenic applications)

(Steel is extra lossy at RF because its permeability further

Always a wise idea, of course...

I have several ppeices of RG-6 in my garage that our cableman gave me off his scraps in the truck and not one inch is coperweld.

Looking at a Belden listing for 5 different kinds of RG6, The loss at 10 MHz is .9 DB/100' for the copperweld, and .7 DB for the solid copper. The db loss at 1 MHz is about 1/2 the 10 MHz number. All have a loss of 7.3 DB at

1000 MHz, except the 9290 solid copper, which is 8.8 . I looked at less than half of their different kinds of RG6, but a quick scan did not point out anything odd.

Tam/WB2TT

Belden isn't in the category of "el cheapo" cable, which was the subject of my posting.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Unless you collect thosands of feet of it from the local CATV dumpster where they toss out partial boxes and reels. When I moved south I had over a mile of it. It was all new scrap, and some pieces were over 300 feet.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida