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Ether everywhere!
Looking at that I had horror-flashbacks to thinnet.

Shudders

FWIW, that's thick-wire with a vampire tap.

Not ThinWire.

The early DEC H4000 transceivers were rather larger than that transceiver, too.

"Frozen garden hose"

It's somewhat ironic that I've repurposed a lot of old RG-58 thinnet for ham radio use. I wonder if salvaged RG-8 thicknet is still pretty useable for HF or even VHF radio if you plug the holes from vampire taps?

The RG8 was originally quite good for this use.

Used cable? Test it. The usual "fun" with the vampire taps were fragments of the shielding that became entrained by the drill bit or when the tap was removed.

And after all these years, corrosion around where the vampire taps had been mounted, material degradation, and damage when the cable is removed from service.

The old VAX Computer Interconnect (CI) cable from DEC was even better for this usage and that stuff didn't get tapped, but it is harder to find these days. There were a number of radio clubs in New England that used that cabling as feed lines.