I ended up going with the Hawkings N-male to N-female 30 ft

A friend suggested using http://www.cablexperts.com.

I looked up a 30ft plug to jack cable from them made of 9913 and they would charge $55.00 for it. I think that is more expensive than what you are paying. They do indicate that Belden #9913 is equivalent to LMR400. The cable you ordered is HDF400 so they are similar but different cable materials, don’t know how to read the letters.

CableXperts best material seems to be LMR600 now. At 900MHz, 100ft of LMR400 has 3.9dB loss while LMR600 has 2.5dB of loss, but the LMR600 will cost you $115 for a 30ft cable assembly.

I guess the 9913 was the “best” grade for high frequency usage.  His information is useful. He also mentioned that your antenna should not be around metal, which includes siding.  Grounded metal effects your signal differently than non-grounded metals.  He also mentioned that the signal gets drawn to earth.  I will be attempting to put it about 8 feet up in the air for my next test.  Cable quality is king – there can be a lot of loss when making your own cables or using cheap “Radio Shack” cables for this use.

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