[CQ-Contest] Re: Which coax jumpers reduce SO2R interference

[Jim Cain]

Bob, N5NJ, said:

>Make sure the connectors are tight too.  Yes, use a pair of pliers to "snug" them up.  Be careful not to over-tighten them though.  It is possible to tighten them too much >and break the connector.

>Regardless of where they are, make sure the connectors are tight.  You may need to loosen and re-tighten them periodically to assure the quality of those connections >over time.

These comments make sense if you are into RF.

20 years ago I got out of radio and got seriously into high-end analog audio (amassing more than 3,000 LPs in the process). If I had a dollar for every engineering-type who pooh-poohed my audio efforts, I could retire. The pooh-poohing stopped when they heard a string quartet appear, live, in my listening room. Audiophiles are into tweaks, and there even was a product called "Tweak." The deal was, not only did you ensure that your connectors were tight, you were instructed by the gurus to clean them regularly with chem-lab pure water (I scored a bottle from a local ham), then apply Tweak. One lunatic who wrote for The Absolute Sound swore by raising the cables, especially the speaker cables, off the floor. 

An important tweak -- which I never resorted to -- was to pull the mains power to everything in the house except the hi-fi, to avoid those nasty Fields. 

 Jim Cain, K1TN/9