## Im late to the PL-259 soldering party. I find those Amphenol nickel plated
connectors a real pita to solder.
A few years ago, I bought 2 doz van gorden silver / teflon connectors.
Now that’s the only thing that van gordon sold
that was actually any good. Silver plated body and silver plated barrel. I
use a 100 w american beauty iron..which has
a .375 inch main body on the tips.... IE: the part that goes into the iron.
The tip is a tapered down chisel tip. We used
hundreds of these irons back in my telco days... up to about mid 80s, then
everything went to wire wrap, then later to
quick connect punch downs. You can also get an AB 150w replacement element
that slides right into any 100 w AB iron.
## The tapered down chisel tip and correct diam solder works really good on
any of these silver plated connectors.
I have loads of solder..in 1 lb rolls....and in many different diameters.
Real small stuff for pc boards....and bigger stuff
for bigger jobs.
## Dunno if amphenol makes a silver /teflon connector, but that would be a
winner. I gave up on the nickel plated
connectors a few years back, they require way too much heat... which is a pita
if anything other than teflon is used
for the dielectric. A buddy years ago told me how they made commercial
cable assys..and they used a 900 watt iron !
Bam, done. The small 40 watt irons, with their small tips, just don’t have
enough heat to solder a nickel plated connector,
without melting the dielectric on foam coax, etc.
## They should have made the 4 x holes in the barrel of these connectors
oval shaped, or used bigger diam holes.
Some have drilled the holes out a tiny bit bigger...but then you lose the
plating.
## I bought a crimper, so can now crimp instead. I use that setup for
crimping male 7-16 Silver /teflon connectors
onto RG-393 coax. I can also do crimped PL-259s onto 213 / 393 etc.
## american beauty also makes even bigger irons, like 585 watt etc. They use
a .50 inch tip..used for soldering
copper tubing instead of using a blow torch. I thought of that when
soldering to .25 and .375 and also .50 cu
tubing and wide cu strap connections. Dumped that idea, and went to machine
screw connections on the ends
of the flatten’d tubing. Ditto when wrappin cu strap around cu tubing,
machine screws used to cinch the cu straps
tight to the tubing. A 100 w AB iron does not have enough heat to solder
cu tubing, only the bigger irons will work.
later... Jim VE7RF
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