Geoff, GM4ESD wrote: Quite agree Vic, which is why I said "unprotected" !! There are a lot of photos around (e.g. ARRL handbooks) that show bare PL-259s. Vaseline under tape does a good job but not as "clean" as your method.
-------------------------------------------- Quite right! The key to the success of ANY fitting, including the 259 series, is in keeping them *out* of the weather. With the right materials, that's not hard to do no matter where the connector is used. When I last worked on large ships (in the early 1990's) the 259 series connectors were still very common on HF and many VHF antennas. These connectors were in weather no land-based Ham station ever saw unless it had survived dozens of hurricanes and wind-driven 75 to 100 mph ice storms. In addition to wind, water and ice, the systems were sometimes subjected to corrosive stack gasses. Some antennas are mounted high on the funnel where they'd get bathed in the stuff coming out of the engines as it swirls around in the wind. All I can say is that no one in their right mind ever crawled up there with the engines running without a full breathing system on. When those gasses mix with the moist sea air, they form acids that can eat holes in steel. When the connectors were properly protected, unwrapping them after years in that environment would involve peeling off layers of salt-encrusted, weather-beaten coax seal and tape to reveal connectors as pristine as the day they were installed, even though the reason for taking them apart was often because the coax cable or the antenna itself had disintegrated in the hostile environment. Perhaps some of the other connector types are more forgiving if they find themselves exposed to the elements, but I'd recommend putting one's effort into keeping the connectors "out of the weather" by proper protection before switching to more expensive types. Electrically, there is no reason that I've ever seen documented to avoid the 259 series for work under 50 MHz. I know some RF engineers who don't hesitate to use them in critical applications as high as 200 MHz. The losses in the 259 system are miniscule and the "impedance bump" completely negligible through the HF spectrum at the very least. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
