[Amps] World's worst coax connectors

[Joe Subich, W4TV]

On 4/20/2023 1:27 PM, Jim Garland wrote:

> 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."
I don't know that one can conflate the cable industry with television
broadcasting.  In 40 years, the only places I saw F connectors in either
a TV broadcast facility or remote production facility was in TV or
satellite receivers (for IF - block down converter to tuner - links)
*after* CATV became ubiquitous.

73,

    ... Joe, W4TV

On 4/20/2023 1:27 PM, Jim Garland wrote:
> 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)
>