Wow Brad - Thanks for your encouragement (Thanks to everyone for their
encouragement) and for the terrific articles on PL259s. Better than what
I found on YouTube, although that was helpful too. I have skimmed them
and will study them before working. I have the cable stripper from DX
Engineering. What a beauty that is.
I was first licensed As WN2GLY in High School (1963), built myself a
DX-40, but never got my General. Last fall, while I was laid up after
surgery, I decided to get back in, so I have been licensed since
November.
But a lot of the technical; stuff still floors me. I started with an
ICOM 7600, the most confusing piece of equipment I ever saw, but
switched to Flex after seeing SDR at a local show.
(If anyone wants a 7600 and a Rig Blaster Pro, I have them for sale).
Thanks again to everyone for the advice. I'm sure I'll need a lot more
On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Brad A. Steffler wrote:
Hi John,
I am a relative newby like you. First call was WN5VYC in 1969 or
1970 ( hard to remember exactly).
Then I started hamming in earnest in 1980 as KA4OHR. Became KE4XJ in
1980 at the Atlanta Hamfest.
But I went QRT in 1983 after selling my Kenwood TS-520SE, career and
4 kids. I bought a Flex 5000a in
August of 2010, built myself a tuner and put up an 80 Meter
horizontal loop fed with 600 ohm parallel
conductor line. The tuner is a balanced-balanced tuner made after
the design of Rich Measures, AG6K.
I found that the installation of PL-259 connectors (for the rig
output to the tuner and for the 2 Meter and 70 Cm
bands) is more difficult than I remembered. After messing up two
cables, I used the wonderful aid of the
world wide web and found recommendations for soldering the PL-259,
and occasionally SO-239, connectors
to the co-ax cable with a large soldering iron. In cold weather, I
use a small propane torch made for soldering,
if I was working outside. I started using this method for all PL-259
connections, but I found the heat hard
to control without overheating the coax jacket:
http://www.seed-solutions.com/gregordy/Amateur%20Radio/Experimentation/SolderCoax.htm
<http://www.seed-solutions.com/gregordy/Amateur%20Radio/Experimentation/SolderCoax.htm>
So now I use this method (unless it is very cold outside):
http://www.pituch.net/ARES/training%20docs/Coax%20Connectors%20%28Color%29.pdf
<http://www.pituch.net/ARES/training%20docs/Coax%20Connectors%20%28Color%29.pdf>
All the articles recommended using a multimeter to check the cable
with the soldered connectors for continuity
by measuring resistance (you should get a short circuit if
everything is at zero DC resistance). My digital
multimeter, a Fluke 110, also allows me to measure capacitance. Even
when you have a zero resistance DC circuit,
I suppose the connection could be so poor (at least in my case) that
there could be some capacitance on the line.
So this can be checked as well. I didn't check for capacitance, but
I did check for DC conduction in both directions,
shield to shield and pin to pin as well as pin to shield short
circuits.
I finally ended up using a large soldering iron to heat the entire
connector while it the cable was held in a small
Panavise with padded jaws. I got the iron at Hobby Lobby. It was
made for working with stained glass and melting
lead solder for the glass panes. The iron is large, with a large
heat mass and is about 175-200 watts. The large
amount of thermal mass was necessary to heat up the connector to
allow solder to flow by melting into the holes
in the shield portion of the connector. The center pin was very easy
to solder. The weak point for me was the
soldering of the shield braid to the outer portion of the connector.
I also found a tool sold by DX Engineering which is wonderful for
preparing LMR-400 and RG-213 for accepting the
connectors. it is called a coax cable stripper , model number DXE-UT
and is found at
http://www.dxengineering.com/Products.asp?ID=240&SecID=104&DeptID=30
<http://www.dxengineering.com/Products.asp?ID=240&SecID=104&DeptID=30> .
DX Engineering has a lot of good
tools for sale for working with different antenna system components.
Now, all my coax cables work well, although I bet I can find a way
to make them fail ( I seem to be good at this).
I hope this helps you find and solve the problem(s). By the way, I
am 62 years old and just received a prosthetic total left hip
replacement 8 weeks ago. So I, too, no longer climb up towers or
onto roofs, or even very tall ladders into a tree.
Unfortunatley, I still have to go up a short ladder to clean the
gutters...
Brad A. Steffler, MD
KE4XJ
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