Hi Scott,
I've had good and not so good experiences with using shrink tubing on
PL-259. The good is with the really heavy duty "flooded" variety. It is
flooded with adhesive that really bonds the tubing to the coax. I found some
the other day at a local electrical supply house. It is labeled; "PANDUIT
HST0.8 600V. it is a bright salmon red color and a 6" piece cost me $7.15!
The bad I had was with the garden variety thin walled stuff that let water
in and held it in and allowed it to migrate into the coax that I had poorly
prepared and left one braid hole un soldered...one of those "temporarily
permanent" cables that ended up permanent and was a bear to track down. Get
the good stuff if you want the insurance. I will never cut a corner in
soldering again. :-)
I have found what I think is a better solution than heat shrinking. The Self
bonding Silicon tape is really impressive, easy to use and less expensive.
Gardner and Bender, GB Electrical products carries a version as do most Ace
Hardware stores. This is the same tape that SteppIR uses to bond their
fiberglass elements together. Take a look at this option also.
Regards,
Jon-K6EL
k6el@comcast.net
-----Original Message-----
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:23:51 -0600
From: "K7ZO \(Scott Tuthill\)" <k7zo@cableone.net>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Shrink Tubing on Coax & PL-259?
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <449439462F6E4CBC87F61501C4F177F3@UpstairsNew>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
I am about to make a bunch of coax assemblies for the latest antenna
projects at NK7U. Joe and I were talking about putting shrink tubing over
the end of the coax and up over the end of the PL-259. We have seen this
done on some commerically produced coax. Any thoughts on this out there?
* Does it make a difference? Is it worth it?
* If so, any recommendations on what Shrink Tubing to use and suppliers of
it?
Thanks for the advice.
Scott/K7ZO
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|