Vince
A useful Coax chart I posted is in this thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/quality-test-cable-rg58-alternative/
BTW, forget about using the thin flexible probe cables, they are not 50 Ohm rated and are lossy to help manage reflections.
Thanks for the link. Chart useful indeed, I have it in a safe place now...
Thread over there is... well, in just a handful of posts they managed to throw more cable types/norms than I can count, it's overwhelming. Clearly a whole can of worms in its own right... not qualified to go into that.
I do gather from the though, that important things are improved/ doubled screening for better signal integrity, losses which limit use at very high / Shahriar like frequencies (not my world...), and that having a stranded inner core is more important to achieve cable flexibility, than having a thin/small diameter cable. RG58 with stranded core apparently makes people happy for use on the bench as a test lead. So I should bed happy too I guess...
And foil shielding not good for test cables as won't last long on the bench, foil will deteriorate. Need braided shielding.
For now all I wanted was a quick answer to what is a decent general purpose affordable get me started with basic stuff... cable.
Seems RG58 'C' suffix is a good default choice, so will go with that for now.
Then later on if I get smarter and do fancy stuff that requires specific spec for thjis or that...then I will worry about what cable type is best for whatever it is that I want to achieve.
I guess the most likely scenario is if I get rich and can afford test gear to venture at several GHz, then maybe RG58 might have too much loss to be bearable. We shall see.
for now I am not into fancy RF stuff, so RG58 should do it I guess...
Well I do have a 3GHz scope, a TDC 694C, so I might want to get a cheap PLL like
Factory AVGresponding just did, and sweep from 2 to 4GHz to see how it does, plot its bandwidth response out of curiosity, just for fun. But that's about as far as my "RF" needs are likely to go for the foreseeable future....