Do you ever think about coax cable not having a ground?

[Telekinetic-Potato]

... Or does it?

[Glenn-mann13]

Anytime I had a tv connected to an outdoor antenna it was grounded to protect my tv from lightning strikes. The threaded part of the cable ends is what you connected to the ground, they literally sold grounding blocks for this reason.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

That's just shielding. It's not technically part of the physical circuit.

[Glenn-mann13]

Actually it is part of the circuit. You clearly never made your own custom coaxial cables and crimped your own connectors on the end.

But hey, if you think I’m wrong then try removing that part and tell us how well it works.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

I have... That's how I know you don't need the shielding. I've done my own cat cable, XLR, midi, recapped motherboards, I'm even building a multiband limiter right now with a custom diod stack featuring an adjustable DC bias.

What will that do... To be Frank I'm not totally sure. But if it does what I think it's gonna do just add it to my resume bucko

[Glenn-mann13]

So if I’m understanding you correctly you don’t actually know what will happen but “you think” based on your experience with other unrelated electronics. Sounds like more of an assumption.

Will it function without grounding the shielding? Yes.

Off of a basic antenna you might still get some reception without the shielding, but for me growing up in a rural are I know that reception will be low when the shielding isn’t connected. I know this because I’ve experimented with this. I’ve cut off the end of coaxial cable and stripped it down to the center copper line, performance drops significantly.

Now let’s talk about from a VCR, Dish/Cable box, and video games that are connected through coaxial cables, without the shielding they simply didn’t perform. Now I’ve experimented with speaker wire vs coaxial for these. What I found is unless I had each side of the wire connected separately it wouldn’t work, I did this prior to making my own coaxial cable.

So yes the shielding does have a function.

I have countless hours experimenting with this.

Now let’s talk about your original question; “Do you ever think about coax cable not having a ground?”
True, it doesn’t have a ground in the traditional sense but can be grounded for safety. I’ve had electronics fry before I started grounding the coaxial, but doesn’t need to be grounded for basic function. The shielding still has a function though, whether you think it should or not.

Coaxial is cheap and older electronics are still easy to come by if you want to actually experiment…….. but judging from how you reply to me and others I’m thinking this isn’t about finding answers but more about rage bait.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

The first thing I said is I've done this and that's how I know. Fucking with coax when I was little was how I realized I was interested in electronics. You can actually run unshielded, ungrounded "coax" for over a mile. Coax is cheap now but it wasn't always that way. Which is why back in the day they had G lines or goubau line.

I posted this question because as a kid I always wondered why on some setups if you touch the wire, the TV would go dim. What I didn't know back then is I was touching single line transmission wire operating in TM mode where the wire acts almost like an antenna guiding waves along a path.

Now that is an utterly fascinating and mind bending thing to me and I was kinda inviting people who understand rf and em to share whatever comes to mind... And also rage bait people who think terminating cables makes them an engineer or something.

Because there's something really satisfying about trying to have an innocent conversation but also laying a trap for pretentious jerks (who probably have never even used an oscilloscope) that want to act all high and mighty and "teach" on a subject they've barely scratched the surface of... Bucko lol cmon it's at least a little funny

[NathanDavis]

tell it to go to the corner... now it's grounded...

[dudeinohio]

Shield carries the ground. However, how the cable terminates, determines the actual state of the ground.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

But it's not a ground in a normal sense. Like a coax cable will totally work without a shield. It's not like it's really effecting what's going on in the TV besides blocking interference. It's not going to generate a polar. Magnetic field like a traditional circuit with a positive and negative.

[dudeinohio]

With RF, you need a counterpoise to offset the center conductor.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

But that's what makes it so interesting to me single wire transmission is technically TM (transverse magnetic) meaning... We'll understand ding what it means kinda hurts my head at least because it acts sorta like rf but it can be shorted out by touching the line so I dunno maybe the hippies were right all along and everything really just is vibrations man 🫶🏼

[worldscolide]

Man I haven't messed with coax in years. But I always ground it.

[Ironic_Method]

I didn't think the cables needed grounding, not for household use anyway.

[EmmaMary]

What exactly is coax cable?

[Telekinetic-Potato]

It's the cable you used to plug into your TV when it was made of glass.

It's made of one wire in the middle and shielding... Which... Technically doubles as a sort of ground... But if you take it away the cable still works somehow. 🤔🤔🤔

[EmmaMary]

I think I've got the gist of it now... Thank you.

[FreyaRed]

Depends on galvanic separation.

[jshm2]

No. It doesn't use electricity.