Cat 5/6 for cameras

[watchdog]

I normally use coax for cameras but have used cat 5 + baluns on some jobs when the sparkies have run the cable. I have a few questions for those that use it regularly.
1) What is the max distance it is good for & is cat 6 better than cat 5
2) What is the resistance /metre of a single wire (for voltage drop calcs)

[LeroyPatrol]

We had a camera running on phone cable over approx 200M with baluns. This was the only cable we had running to this location so gave it a go. The installer wasn't sure how well it would work but it's been flawless.

Leroy

[intelliGEORGE]

You can get upto 2km on active baluns.

As for voltage drop, the cable gauge is AWG 24 which has a maximum DC resistance specification of 0.0938 / m.

[watchdog]

How about unpowered baluns

[intelliGEORGE]

As Leroy said 200m.

[Chimp]

its worth buying branded ones as well for longer runs (like NVT). some of the others can be pretty shithouse

[watchdog]

So can anyone fill me in on how these distances are obtained given that a passive balun is simply an impedance matching transformer which will by its very nature involve some degree of signal loss in the matching of 75^ to 100^ impedance.
I've just completed a job with the two furthest cameras at 180m & 215m These are run with RG59u & power is supplied locally at the camera. RG59u is supposed to be good for 250m. Result - picture from camera at 180m dropping in & out while picture from camera at 215m is non existant. Picture AT the cameras is perfect. These were supposed to be run in RG6 but for various reasons that did not happen. So I'm stuck with the RG59 & thinking a video amp may be the solution. Any thoughts or ideas ?

[intelliGEORGE]

Cheap coax comes to mind.

A lot of crap is hitting the market, especially copper coated steel core coax.