wire for projects

[Tom VA3TS]

Sometimes, a project sits idle because we can't find any suitable wire. I have found a good source and it is usually tossed out as being unusable. I speak of the lowly vga cable.

   

This picture shows a piece of this cable, the covering stripped off, to reveal a nice braided shield

   

Inside of the braid is where the useful wires exist. I ground wire, then a foil shield, inside that, 3 shielded conductors plus 3 more individual wires.

   

A ham can find many uses for this, even if you don't use every conductor, this picture below is an 8 pin microphone extension cable, nicely shielded. Other uses are hookups for digital modes etc. This vga cable has built in ferrites, another plus.  Have fun building 

   

[VA3KOT John]

Thanks for the tip Tom. I have a bin full of old computer and audio/video cables most of which are probably shielded. I was going to throw most of them out but now I am going keep them for use as you suggested.