Excess baggage is a well-known problem for all radio amateurs travelling with their equipment by plane. To avoid hefty extra costs you have to reduce the weight of your gear as much as ever possible. Today there is a wide choice of light-weight transceivers and power supplies. Thin antenna wire does not add much weight either, but that of the feed lines has to be considered as well. Just 25 meters of RG58C/U add a full kilo to your load (not to mention its bulkiness). If you plan to use more than one antenna, 25 meters will surely not be enough. RG174, light and thin, appears as a possible alternative. Its centre conductor consists of seven tiny (0.16mm O.D.) copper-clad strands of steel to improve the break load of the cable. However, the thin strands have a copper coating of only 10 providing sufficient skin-depth only for frequencies above 20 MHz. At lower frequencies deeper RF-penetration causes considerably higher losses especially on the Low Bands. For this reason a modified version of RG174 has been manufactured for us. The centre conductor of stranded steel-wire has been replaced by a solid 0.48 mm copper-wire, hard-drawn, because ordinary copper is too soft to provide the necessary mechanical strength of the cable. The table below shows the significantly reduced loss of our DXW174 with its centre conductor of solid copper particularly on the Low Bands.

Ref.: Measurement with TENTEC TAPR VNA (without guarantee)

While RG58C/U is three times as heavy as our DXW174, its attenuation is only about 1/3 lower. Considering the fact that normally 20 meters of feed line per antenna will be sufficient, our DXW174 offers an attractive choice. It is also most suitable for the long runs of feed line to Beverage antennas usually placed at some distance away for better isolation from the TX signal. Furthermore, the thin cable can easily be fitted with common mode chokes using ferrite cores.
Specifications:
Centre conductor: 0.48mm O.D. Cu (hard-drawn)
Dielectric: Polyethylene 1.5 mm
Shield: 16 x 4 x 0.1 mm Cu (tinned)
Sleeve: PVC black
O. D.: 2.9 mm
Weight: 14 g/m (cf. RG58C/U 40g/m)
Characteristic Impedance: 50 ohms ( Velocity factor 0,66 )
Power Capability: min. 100 watts up to 30 MHz
Manufactured according to MIL-C17
Price list:
Cut to size € 0.50/m
100m cardboard bobbin € 45.00
250m cardboard bobbin € 100.00
1000m wooden bobbin € 380.00
Connector Mounting Advice:
Customary connectors for RG174, RG316, LMR100 etc. can be used for our DXW174. As these connectors are not often to be found in the junk box, there is a simple alternative. You can thicken the end of the cable with shrink tube and fold back some braid over it. Now you can use the usual connectors for RG58. This has been done successfully here for many years using 1:3 (6mm to 2mm) heat shrink tubing with interior adhesive and the PL259/6 plug available at www.KABEL-KUSCH.de. A short piece of suitable shrink tube will be added to your order on request.