[Milsurplus] (no subject)

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

Joe,

It's wise never to say never.  But I'm going to stick my neck out and say 
that unless you happened to stumble across something another ham or collector 
made up, you aren't going to find any ready made cables for the ARB.

Meir was going to give you some information when he got home and checked 
the manual and I'm betting he either got tied up on something else or ran into 
the same thing I did.  The ARB manual does in fact have a drawing showing 
cable construction details.  But the wire to be used is given as number of 
strands of a given diameter, not in AWG.  I am (or was) a practicing EE and 
probably have as good a technical library as most.  And none of my reference 
books have stranded wire tables.  However, one of them gave some useful rules 
of thumb and another the specs on the strand specified in the ARB manual, 
and I have an answer for you.

There is a two-conductor battery power cable and depending upon whether you 
are setting up a single-place or dual-place installation, one or two 
sixteen-conductor cables.  The sixteen-pin connectors may be straight or 
right-angle and have various insert rotations or key orientations.  But aside from 
that, all of the sixteen-conductor ones use the same conductors.  According to 
the manual, The sixteen conductor cables are each made up of two conductors 
having twenty-six strands of 0.010" diameter wire and fourteen conductors 
having ten strands of 0.010" diameter wire.  The two-conductor cable has two 
conductors each having sixty-five strands of 0.010" diameter wire.

Reference to the solid copper wire tables shows that #30 AWG has a nominal 
diameter of 0.01003".  So the strands are #30 AWG.  #30 has an area of 100.5 
circular mils.  So ten strands has an area of 1005 circular mils.  #20 AWG 
is listed as having an area of 1022 circular mils and one of the rules of 
thumb is that decreasing the AWG number by a factor of ten increases the area 
by a factor of ten.  Which is a cross check.  So the fourteen conductors are 
each #20 AWG stranded copper.  Twenty-six #30 AWG would have a nominal area 
of 2613 circular mils.  #16 AWG has a listed area of 2583 circular mils so 
the two large conductors are probably #16 AWG stranded (#15 AWG is 3257 
circular mils but that's quite a bit larger than 2613 and you can't commonly buy 
odd number wire above #1 so I think #16 must be correct, or at least 
satisfactory).  Sixty-five strands of 0.01." diameter will have an area of 6532.5 
circular mils.  #12 AWG is listed as having an area of 6530 circular mils.  
So the two battery power conductors are #12 AWG stranded.

If you make up the remote control cable(s) from individual wires you need 
fourteen #20 and two #16.  Or alternatively, you could use twenty #20, which 
you might conceivable find in a multi-conductor cable.  And for the battery 
power cable, you can use $12-2 SJO, which you can get at any hardware.

If anyone sees any error I made, please let me know.  But I believe the 
above to be correct.

In a message dated 8/5/2009 3:54:25 AM Central Daylight Time, 
w5jdy at intergate.com writes: 
> Hello again from Joe w5jdy in Okla.   I would like to make a connecting
> cable to go from a ARB military radio to the remote control head...  I 
> have
> the connectors...  Anyone have any advice?   Mainly the size of the wires
> and how many of each size... Sure would like to buy one already made-up...
> Thanks Joe

Robert & Susan Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480