Batboard

Is Belden 8770 cable what Whelen sends out with their tubes? IIRC correctly that is 18 gauge cable. Would a 16 gauge cable be better for strobe tubes in long cable runs? What is a good stobe tube cable and where can I buy a spool of it?

excellent question!!! i am now curious...

i usally just go down the Whelen and buy a spool from them

i dont get 3 i get six seeing how you have usally have atleast 2 strobes at eather enad of vehicle

Does the cable have any markings on it?

After a conversation with someone this afternoon about strobe cabling (it made me curious as well) a friend of mine told me that the 18 gauge strobe cables are usually effective up to 25 feet. IF you are going to go longer than 30 feet you should have a heavier gauge cable. He couldn't give me any math equations or theories behind it but stated that he found that from personal experience.

18 gauge cable is the standard, there is also a 22 gauge cable that I personaly would never use. After searching around it seems the Belden 8770 is the gold standard 18 gauge 3 conductor foil shielded cable with tinned bare dump wire.

I see quite a few OEM fire apparatus manufacturers today use #22 over the length of a 40' truck and they work just fine. I use both sizes and never had a problem yet. #22 is nice when you have a bundle of 8 or 10 cables going to the rear of a vehicle.

After all, when was the last time you felt one of the individual wires heat up? (and I don't mean from the lamp itself)

You mean you can't use flat unshielded trailer light harness wire???

I'm sure you could. just wear a helmet when you turn the strobes on since you might wear an airbag or get inadvertent ABS activation or many other EMI problems!

I always like seeing standard CAT5 cable used for headphone installations. Not the shielded stuff, either. "We get this noise that goes 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' whenever the PTO generator or the pump is running."

I'm sure that 4 strand telephone cable would work on strobes. The unused fourth conductor could be put to ground for the EMI shield

jim wrote:I'm sure you could. just wear a helmet when you turn the strobes on since you might wear an airbag or get inadvertent ABS activation or many other EMI problems!

The FS JetStrobe bars we have use 10 strobe heads and all the wiring within the bar is unshielded 18ga or 20ga single strand wire, all wire-tied together in bundles...

Our cruisers have 110w VHF orion's, and the AS 5/8w antenna is mounted about 15" behind the lightbars, with no interference to either the power supplies or radio.

I can understand the bar being shielded from interior electronics by the roof metal, but I'm kinda surprised that there is no interference with the radio....

Shielding is key. Due to some drilling and not wanting to drill as the time limitiations, I installed my lightbar right next to my VHF antenna. The antenna is litially a 1/4 inch or less next to the strobe bar and zero problems.

Of course, when the spectra is cold is gets all sorts or intermod, but no EMI. Go figure.