Antenna over Cat6?

[tomo2607]

This is likely a rookie question, but can radio mic antennas be extended with BNC over Cat6 adapters? 

We have a pair of P180 antenna for our line6 XD's (x6). I wanted to get the antenna closer to the stage, and we have LOTS of cat6 patch points (not ethernet). I wondered if the BNC to RJ45 adapters on the likes of CPC could be used to good effect for this? or if the 50ohm to 100ohm impedance difference would cause issue? 

 

Id rather not move the receivers, as the RF and Battery read out has is very useful...

[sunray]

22 minutes ago, tomo2607 said:

This is likely a rookie question, but can radio mic antennas be extended with BNC over Cat6 adapters? 

We have a pair of P180 antenna for our line6 XD's (x6). I wanted to get the antenna closer to the stage, and we have LOTS of cat6 patch points (not ethernet). I wondered if the BNC to RJ45 adapters on the likes of CPC could be used to good effect for this? or if the 50ohm to 100ohm impedance difference would cause issue? 

 

Id rather not move the receivers, as the RF and Battery read out has is very useful...

Is there not a RJ45 on the receiver and a 'remote antenna accessory) available for these?

My apologies if I'm thinking of a different system.

As to the OP, if you are referring to the video adapters I doubt the bandwidth will be enough. It's worth a try to see if it does enough for your requirements though, no harm can result.

Edited October 19, 2022 by sunray

[tomo2607]

No unfortunately not...

 

[paulears]

The video is 75 Ohm not 50 Ohm, but I thought I'd try one with a bit of RF and it is incredibly lossy, and a rotten VSWR - mine just flashes below 5:1 and it flashes. I suspect the transformer saturates - but the reality is that what you would be doing is just making a balun - unbalanced to balanced converter, but cat5/6 cable, even the screened stuff is just not designed as RF cable. 2.4GHz down Cat6 with a lossy balun at each end is just very inefficient. In fairness, VSWR isn't really a good way of measuring the efficiency of this system, and my analyser is only rated to 1.5GHz.

I'd expect something like mismatched satellite cable to perform better than two baluns and cat 5/6, but I have a pile of these receivers in a rack on stage, and do miss the battery and RF indicators - but the sound position is 40m from the stage, and with wifi signals all over the place, the benefits of that location made it essential. Have you thought about a cheap wi-fi camera you could point at the receivers and watch it the other end on a phone or computer?

[sunray]

12 hours ago, paulears said:

The video is 75 Ohm not 50 Ohm, but I thought I'd try one with a bit of RF and it is incredibly lossy, and a rotten VSWR - mine just flashes below 5:1 and it flashes. I suspect the transformer saturates - but the reality is that what you would be doing is just making a balun - unbalanced to balanced converter, but cat5/6 cable, even the screened stuff is just not designed as RF cable. 2.4GHz down Cat6 with a lossy balun at each end is just very inefficient. In fairness, VSWR isn't really a good way of measuring the efficiency of this system, and my analyser is only rated to 1.5GHz.

I'd expect something like mismatched satellite cable to perform better than two baluns and cat 5/6, but I have a pile of these receivers in a rack on stage, and do miss the battery and RF indicators - but the sound position is 40m from the stage, and with wifi signals all over the place, the benefits of that location made it essential. Have you thought about a cheap wi-fi camera you could point at the receivers and watch it the other end on a phone or computer?

But it's always worth having a little play.

Did you/is your analyser capable of being normalised to 75Ω? I don't expect the results to be much different, It always surprises me video works as well as it does.
 

 

Many years ago we were asked to put in radio mic facilities for an outdoor event spread over a long distance, something like 1/2 to 1 mile, I used loads of TV coax from wickes, really nasty cheap crap and every 100m lashed up a couple of bits of stiff wire using choc bloc to create a dipole. IIRC there were 3 EDC receivers running on a SLA with about 4 aerials each and unscreened twisted pair parallelled the audios together. It really shouldn't have worked but it was reasonably successful... far from perfect but basically useable.

We put loads of plasma screens in for an event, we knew there are TV outlets and initially the hotel said we'd be able to feed into their system, during setting up that access was refused and all we had with us was twin fig8 0.5mm² flex, all or nothing we started running it round simply teeing into each TV RF in and setting the modulator closest to 0Ω again it worked sufficiently well for the event... but it shouldn't have.

If something provides an adequate solution does it matter?