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Hopefully some new (or OLD!) ham can learn from my experience. I have a satellite yagi on a boom with an Az/El (that is 2 axis) rotator. The azimuth rotation can turn 450 degrees (a turn and a quarter) and the elevation can go from 0 to 180 (level in one direction to level in the other direction). Naturally that requires considerable care running cables to allow them to follow the antenna around. I thought I had done that, but no. See the picture. What happened is that I had the cable wound around the boom appropriately and loosely (and around the mast for azimuth). However gravity pulled the cable down the mast, which tightened the loops around the boom. Suddenly I noticed that my elevation rotor was kind of straining and saw this white patch on my cable where it was rubbed raw against the boom. Luckily the rotor seems ok and the cable was fairly easy and cheap to replace.
The slightly good news: my XYL pointed out that the picture I took of the cable after I replaced it is quite a good demonstration of how coax is made. You can see the outer insulation, foil and braid shield, inner dialectric, and the center conductor all exposed for viewing. (This is LMR400-UltraFlex)
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