I apologize for presenting my opinion.
Clearly, someone knows better than I.
My decades of experience must mean
nothing.
Bryan WA7PRC
Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 13:52:50 -0700
From: [Deleted]
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Soldering Iron, Connectors, Cable
On Tue,5/10/2016 1:18 PM, Bryan WA7PRC via TowerTalk wrote:
> The idea that only Amphenol produces good quality connectors is
> not correct. There are others. DX Engineering supplies top-shelf
> connectors and adapters at reasonable cost.
Unless you are in the position of a mfr or vendor to buy and test
samples from known mfrs, or have worked for a mfr who has done that,
you're in no position to know whether a mfr's product is good or not,
let alone "top shelf." The electronic products I've seen from DXE are of
good quality, but I've not seen their connectors or cables.
> Others have touted The RF Connection as a source of good quality connectors
> at reasonable cost.
That may be, but they sell a lot of JUNK connectors too. When I got back
on the air around 2003, I filled my parts box with 5-10 each of the 5-8
pin DIN connectors they were selling. They were junk -- metal that
wouldn't take solder, dielectric that melted under minimal heat from a
good iron.
In the same time frame, I also stocked up on lots of low cost coax
connector adapters, barrels, elbows, and Tees at Chicago area hamfests,
typically paying $2-$4 each. In the four years that followed, I learned
the hard way that those connectors were JUNK -- they fell apart,
overheated, went intermittent, and outright failed -- each time causing
me lots of grief in troubleshooting the problem. A $12 connector or
adapter seems expensive, until you've crawled through an attic, along a
coax run, or climbed a tower to find a $4 piece of junk.
> They seem to have a wide selection.
Yes. They also sell Amphenol, and a broad selection of hard line
connectors they have been able to find. But I will no longer do biz with
them because I learned that they pulled what I consider to be a very
dirty trick on their employee who I dealt with on a large group
purchase several years ago.
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