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Open in coax

To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Open in coax
From: rattmann@cts.com (rattmann)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 10:18:54 -0700
>I have an open circuit in my coax feedline to the tribander--about 150 feet 
>long.  Looking for ways to tell where the open is.  Coax is about 6 years 
>old and looks and feels ok.

Hi Dennis,
If the actual problem is not due to a failure (open) at either one connector
or the other, I will be extremely surprised.  In 36 years of this stuff, I
have sure never seen a piece of RG-8 or RG-213 actually "break" internally.

A relatively fragile coax like RG-58 conceivably could break due to pinching.

Interesting things happen to connectors with aging.  Last year I had a piece
of RG-213 look "open" and it was driving me crazy finding the problem.  I
had a cable splice in a termination box, joining a cable-end male-N to a
cable-end female-N. There was no strain on this splice.  It turned out that
over time (with lots of hot weather in San Diego), the center dielectric of
the cable had migrated (pulled back) relative to the connector body.  The
male-N pin thus had retracted about 3/16 inch, and separated from the female
pin, even though the male pin at one time had been in the right position.

You didn't mention whether you are able to get at both ends of your cable at
the same time, so you can do a good continuity check while wiggling both
terminations.

Let us know what you find.

73, Glenn K6NA


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