I've pretty much exhausted most of the permutations of my cables and connectors. The only persistent behavior is that if I apply slight pressure to the side of the BNC connector where it plugs into the jack on the KX3, or sometimes if I twist it and then apply slight pressure just so, I see a jump in the noise floor and instead of the internal ATU wearing itself out and giving up with a 9:1 or 7:1 SWR, it immediately tunes to 1.0 or 1.1. I have removed/swapped all my the antenna leads. I have four of them, all Cables On Demand (Amphenol) manufacture. I also have a number of BNC to banana plug jacks, and even an MFJ-1899T. If I replace the leads without doing the twisting-and-slight-pressure thing, I lose the RF connection; the S meter has no indications on it, and the noise floor is nonexistent.
As the old saw goes "The only common thing about all of your dysfunctional relationships... is you." I can extrapolate that to "the only common thing about all my poor connections is the BNC jack on the KX3." Yes, I have cracked the case, confirmed that all connections are firmly seated; all mechanical connections are sound and tightly made. I have a jeweler's screwdriver that I have used to slightly bend the female 'fingers' in for a better contact as well; they bend inward, and then spring back into place again. It's about time to consider a new jack. Frustrating, but I've now spent three or so hours finagling this and given the bench rate of an RF tech, I'm wasting money (and time.) On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 10:32 AM, Ignacy <n...@arrl.net> wrote: > I use many BNC connectors, some at KW level, and nearly all of them are > good. > But occasionally some do not make a good contact and need to be thrown away > ASAP. The best way to check is to try another cable. > > Recently I bought a large number of cheap RG-58 cables with BNC connectors > from showmecables.com. The cables turned out to be 60 Ohm and many > connectors are poor. > > I like cables at hamfests from old professional equipment. > > Ignacy, NO9E > > > > -- > Sent from: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/ > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to r...@wc3t.us > -- 72, Rich Hurd / WC3T / DMR: 3142737 PA Army MARS, Northampton County RACES, EPA-ARRL Public Information Officer for Scouting Latitude: 40.761621 Longitude: -75.288988 (40°45.68' N 75°17.33' W) Grid: *FN20is* ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
