[TowerTalk] CATV Hardline connectors

[Lee Buller]

>Fellow tower talkians,this will be my first attempt at requesting info
>from Tower Talk.I hope someone can help me.I recently aquired a
>large amount of CATV hardline.I need to adapt the hardline to standard
>PL 259 fittings.I have seen articles about this but dont recall where.Has
>anyone fabricated any or are there any manufactured that dont cost a 
>bankroll.I will thank you all in advance and look forward to seeing what
>all the answers to my question might bring me.
>
>73 de WT9Q--Bob

Well, I have seen and read about ever scheme there is to make connectors.  I 
like the copper plumbing method the best.  Using copper pipe fittings, one 
can make about anything with a drill, a couple of bits, a file and a lot of 
copper couplers.  But...


The most elligant (or maybe I should say crude) method was to just solder 
and clamp pig tails to the cable and have a small amount of regular coax to 
connect to the antenna or the rig.

I've also seen where guys have just bent the CATV hardline at 90 degress, 
clamped them together...solder a wire across the center connectors and 
placed a two liter plastic bottle over the whole she-bang.

Now all you VHFers and UHFers are going have a lot of comments about that, 
but does it matter on HF?  The guys seem to get out and they really don't 
use a connector at all....


Crude, but I dare say it works!  We even had to do that on the local VHF 
repeater when lighting blew a hole through one of our quarter wave line 
transformers.  We just soldered and clamped on some more coax.  The SWR was 
1.3 to one and we ran that for three months.  Worked fine.  I don't thing 
there would be a problem at HF at all.  Oh yes....weather proof the hell out 
of it with coax-seal, tape, plastic, what have you.

Lee
k0wa@southwind.net


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