Yep, I would never use them above 6 GHz if possible. Return loss goes to hell.
From: Jaime Solorza Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2016 1:33 PM To: Animal Farm Subject: Re: [AFMUG] weird problem I was taught to avoid N connectors above 6 GHz...SMA up to 18GHz .. On Feb 3, 2016 11:38 AM, "Ken Hohhof" <[email protected]> wrote: How tight is “fully tight”? I was taught hand tightened or equivalent, rather than put a wrench on it and crank it until it bottoms out. Is that wrong? SMA connectors seem to have a more pronounced stop when they’re tight. From: Chuck McCown Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2016 12:35 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] weird problem Yeah, it is interesting to watch a N connector on a network analyzer set for return loss/VSWR/reflection coefficient. It gets better with every turn and keeps on improving right up to the last bit of movement. Anything less than fully tight is causing a problem. From: Sean Heskett Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2016 11:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] weird problem 3/4 of a turn on an N connector is a lot. You were probably loosing a lot of RF out that port. On Wednesday, February 3, 2016, Dan Petermann <[email protected]> wrote: We have two 11GHz links on the same freqs. One V and one H pol. These are dual links, 2 - 40Mhz channels. The radios are Dragonwave, one Quantum and the other a Horizion Duo. We had to replace the IDU of the Quantum with a DUO and put the link into DUO compatibility mode. After replacing the IDU, we started having issues on the other link. The RX levels of one freq dropped by 9dBm, the equalizer stress jumped to 150 (should be under 100), and the link would only run at 32QAM. This morning I moved the IDU up 1 RU (it was sitting directly onto of the other IDU) and tightened the coax by 3/4 of a turn. Gained 9dB, lowered equalizer stress by 50, and now running at 256QAM. I check the IF freqs and they were separated by 200MHz. I’m curious, does anyone have an idea why this happened?
