As you probably know, the famous Art of Electronics, by Paul Horowitz
(W1HFA) and Winfield Hill, is the comprehensive go-to bible for hams and
other electronics devotees. Published by Cambridge University Press. H
and H offers the following assessment of the ubiquitous RCA phono
connector.
"The so-called phono jack used in audio equipment is a nice lesson in
bad design, because the inner conductor mates before the shield when you
plug it in; furthermore, the design of the connector is such that both
shield and center conductor tend to make poor contact. You've
undoubtedly /heard/ the results! Not to be outdone, the television
industry has responded with its own bad standard, the type F coax
"connector," which uses the unsupported inner wire of the coax as the
pin of the male plug, and a shoddy arrangement to mate the shield."
Having lived and suffered with RCA phono jacks for many decades, I agree
completely with this assessment. That presumably smart Collins engineers
decided it was acceptable to pump a hundred watts of RF through a phono
jack on an otherwise finely engineered radio seems to me to be an
inexplicably poor decision. It is surpassed only by the equally
unfortunate decision to route deadly high voltage through a (thankfully
obsolete) one-pin Cinch-Jones connector which has no shield or ground
connection.
73,
Jim W8ZR (who is in a cranky mood, today)
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