Hi All,

Many thanks to the kind experts who kindly sent us information in repect to this enquiry a couple of weeks ago.

For FUNcube we have determined that the best coax for our purposes is RG178. The following reasons:

we are only concerned with VHF and UHF signals flight heritage small diameter small minimum bend radius suitability for a variety of connectors - we are using MCX, MMCX and SSMCX connectors on different boards (for good reasons of course)

Lessons learnt and advice received included:

RG178 should not be used outside a spacecraft where it might be exposed to UV The cables will need retaining in some way to resist viabration during launch - glue to board or "tie" to structure. The connectors will also need to be glued together before flight It may be peferable/more reliable to solder cables directly to boards for flight models. All connectors are designed for a limited number of insertions. Therefore "saver" cable/connector assemblies should be used during most of the testing/verification programme. There is a range of extra flexible semi-rigid cables available. (Thats sounds confused) Like all COTS items used in space, the minimum bend radius rule of thumb - 6 times the outer diameter - should be derated if possible.

again thanks an apologies for the delay in getting the results back out:)

73

Graham G3VZV

A simple question this time!

What is the best coax cable to use in a cubesat? Size, flexibility/min radius, existing space heritage, ease of applying connectors are our main design drivers - we are only using UHF and VHF so losses are not going to be too much of a problem hopefully..

many thanks in advance

73

Graham G3VZV