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Reviews For: Shireen, Inc. RFC600 coaxial

Category: Feedlines (coax, ladder-line, etc.)

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Review Summary For : Shireen, Inc. RFC600 coaxial
Reviews: 2MSRP: 0.80/ foot (bulk price)
Description:
Described as "LMR600 equivalent" cable.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.shireeninc.com/cables.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0025
NW2M Rating: 2019-02-21
Excellent, but not for faint of heart! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
There is a local Shireen distributor about 5 miles from me in Germantown MD. I was about to place my order online when I asked it I could do a local pick-up to avoid shipping. He said yes. I arrived at their warehouse which had to have well over 4M feet of coax, CAT cables, connectors, etc. It was on a Sunday and he gave me a full tour of the facility. I paid with credit card and left with a 500 foot spool of RFC600 at $0.85 per foot. I rolled the 85 lbs spool right into my SUV. I ordered several silver/teflon/gold crimp-on connectors for N-type and UHF. The crimping tool with the large hex die was only $32 dollars- which also crimps the center pin. I was ready.

This cable is not for the faint of heart. It is very rigid having a large solid center conductor. The electrical specs are excellent for my needs and the physical characteristics are high quality. The center conductor alone is larger in diameter than a #6 AWG solid wire. Overall, it is 0.590 in diameter, which is where the "600" designation originates. This RFC600 cable is a perfect fit to exit port cushions or hangers for the 600 series cables (0.630 hole). My exit ports can hold up to 9 cables at the base of my tower thru buried conduit.

I am very likely to buy additional spools of cables from them due to their pricing, locality, hospitality, weekend hours, and quality of product. A great end-user experience all around. 73, Al
AC8Y Rating: 2011-03-30
Seems to be a good quality cable Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I was able to get connectors on both ends of a 500 foot spool of cable without unrolling it. An Agilent N5230A was used to test high frequency performance and a signal generator and power meter were used at the lower frequencies.

The cable was terminated with Atelicon (L-com) ANF-1610 & ANM-1610 type N crimp connectors. These connectors are rated to only 6 GHz. Narrow resonances were observed around 3.05 GHz and 8.8 GHz, each was about 4 dB deep. These occurred on two different spools of Shireen cable and were previously observed on CommScope WBC600 and genuine LMR600 cable. These can almost certainly be attributed to the connectors, not the cable.

At all other frequencies the RFC600 cable loss matched the specified loss of Times LMR600 with less than +/- 0.1 dB difference, which is probably about the accuracy of the test set-up.

Delay measurements for the entire spool varied from 585.66 ns at 2 GHz to 585.95 ns at 10 GHz. This works out to a velocity factor of 86.80% to 86.75% which is very close to the published value of 87%. If it turns out that there is actually 501.5 feet of cable on the spool, the measured results would match the published specification. The printed footage mark is not visible on one end of the cable.

The TE11 cutoff frequency is specified as 10.3 GHz. The first evidence of the higher order mode was manifested as increased phase distortion at about 10.38 GHz. The measured loss at 10.368 GHz was 10.5 dB per 100 feet. Connector performance precluded the possibility of deriving any meaningful conclusions from the VSWR data. Measured SWR at 10 GHz was 1.29:1 at the ANM-1610 (male) end and 1.89:1 at the ANF-1610 (female) end. The loss and velocity factor data indicate good dielectric performance.

The outer jacket may feel a bit smoother than Times LMR600 but I did not do a side-by-side comparison. The jacket is sturdy and feels durable. The connectors crimped on firmly and securely.

The cable was shipped the same day it was ordered. Shireen charged about half the standard UPS rate for an 80 pound package.

I ordered one spool in February and another early in March 2011. At that time the price was $395 per 500 foot spool. Within a couple of weeks the price had risen to $725 for an entire spool but the listed price for specific lengths was $1.10 per foot. Although it is still substantially cheaper than genuine LMR600, other imitation products with identical specifications are available at lower cost. Check out CA600 from L-Com.

I have read reviews stating that many of the “generic” LMR type cables are inferior Chinese imitations. The Shireen website states that RFC600 is “Made in USA.” No country of origin was printed on the cable or spool. Regardless of where it is made, RFC600 seems to be a good quality cable. At $395 per 500 feet it was a good deal and deserved a 5/5 rating. Not so much at $725 or even $550.