For now I am tying to order some BNC - BNC test leads but can't make sense of the subtleties between the various acronyms/norms used to describe them. I am wondering if these norms somehow have a relation ship to the physical presentation of the cable. That is, I do'nt want the very thick/big diameter black one, I prefer the thin black ones. Looking at Farnell's offering, pictures and pictures of lots of their cables, I am starting to venture into thinkinh that the (vanilla) RG58 is the cheaper stuff of all, and has the very thick black form.
The RG58 U and / or C might look like the are black too, but thinner / more flexible. It seems to be about twice the price of the thicker RG58.
RG316 however clearly (pun intended) seem to the modern super thin transparent cable that we see all over the place. Price wise it seems to be 3 times the price of the thick RG58.
Thinking out loud in case some silnet lurkers might be interested in the subject as well...
Just looked at Wikipedia, they have a page about the various coax cable types, loads and loads of them. A nice table summarizing everything is provided :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cableSo looks like the " RG" XYZ acronym does indeed code some aspectcs of the cables.
RG58/U is given for 5mm ouside diameter and PE dielectric material.
RG 316 the thin transparent stuff is given as 2.6mm diameter, and PTFE dielectric material.
So look like RG58 is by default the very thick cable type. But looking at pictures on Farnell, some of these RG58 look thinner than others...
Need to dig deeper into the various variations of the RG58 , with these 'U' and/or 'C' suffixes, see if they command a different outside diameter or god knows what.
EDIT :
Found this :
https://service.shure.com/s/article/rg58-a-u-b-u-c-u?language=en_USLooks like the ' U ' is always next to the A/BC letter. It's always A/U or C/U.
Says that A/C all have the same outside diameter... I guess this is fixed due to the dielectric material used that's the same for all RG58 cables, so in order to get the required impedance, it has to be a certain thickness and nothing else... well just a shot in the dark.
"Regular" RG58 has a solid core conductor. 'A' or 'C' have a flexible/stranded conductor, so more flexible (might want that then...). 'C' also has a different material for the outside jacket, as they say. I guess probably to make it more supple/flexible ?
So looks like I can't have a thin RG58, but I can have a flexible one i I buy RG58 C/U ...
Still, my scope probes have very thin and flexible cable, like the transparent stuff but black... so I guess this means it must be yet another RG-XYZ norm again ? Which one ?
Must be someone who knows on here... don't be shy... help me buy nice cables so I don't waste my money on crappy super stiff cables
The search continues...