Are there tools for checking (or that could be adapted to check) if BNC or SMA coaxial cables are in spec for things like proper shielding, impedance (across their bandwidth), etc.? I've found lots of very cheap (<$50) tools for continuity testing, and a couple very expensive (>$20k) analyzers that I think are way overkill, out of budget, and mostly geared towards consumer cables (cat5, etc.). The closest I've seen is this: https://www.tessco.com/product/cable-antenna-analyzer-1-mhz-4-5-ghz-597938 . Would that tell me what I need to know, and would it work with a connector adapter (i.e. to use with BNC or SMA)? It's still a bit pricey ($3.6k) for the intended purpose, but it is within reason. Is there another keyword/type of tool I should look for?
Context: I work in experimental physics where we often do stuff that would probably be better handled by a proper electrical engineer (kind of have to be a jack-of=all-trades). I know enough to get by, but I'm sure I do stuff that would make an RF engineer cringe all the time. I work with signal frequencies anywhere from DC - 5 GHz depending on application, and obviously run into issues more often with the higher frequencies. One thing I've noted is sometimes we run into hard to diagnose problems that ended up being the fault of a BNC or SMA cable (i.e. coaxial cable with BNC or SMA connectors), or a BNC T adapter etc. Sometimes this seems to be because of a cable not really being up to spec with shielding, impedance or bandwidth or something, so they are problems that are a little harder to spot than a simple continuity check. We end up marking cables sometimes ("don't use this one for X", etc.). It'd be nice to be able to just test everything we have in the lab, and dispose of or label the stuff that fails, so we don't waste time trying down trivial issues like this.