[Towertalk] split end on coax for Yagi connection?

[Steve Katz]

How does a pigtail go bad?  Maybe when the pig finds his tail out partying
all night, etc......

Never had pigtail ends go bad, in 37 years of making them and probably 500
installations by now.

After making them properly and attaching them to the beam driven element
feedpoint terminals (whatever they might be), I tape the coax to the boom
very close to the feedpoint, make a 360 degree drip loop in the coax
(RG213/U takes about a 6" diameter coil to make the loop), tape the coax to
the boom again to hold the loop in place, and route the cable down the boom.
Then, I coat all exposed conductors, including the braid, coax dielectric,
exposed coax center conductor, terminals (lugs, hardware, whatever), paying
particular attention to the area where the dielectric and braid separate
from the cable's jacket, with a weatherproof dielectric coating --
successful ones seem to be Red Glypt (from GC), Chemspray High Voltage
Dielectric spray, golly there's a lot to choose from.  Nowadays, "Liquid
Tape" seems to work well, although it didn't exist 35 years ago.

I usually use 2-3-4 layers of spray coat, letting each one dry between
applications (just a few minutes, usually).  

Taking down some 20 year-old installations and examining them, the
originally "pig tailed" coax connections are dry, like new, and
uncontaminated by water or anything else.

WB2WIK/6

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." -
Mario Andretti

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	n6tqs@arrl.net [SMTP:n6tqs@arrl.net]
> Sent:	Thursday, December 19, 2002 10:42 AM
> To:	towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject:	[Towertalk] split end on coax for Yagi connection?
> 
> Hi people, 
> Another basic question: I need to split the end of the coax
> to make pigtails for the Yagi connection for the local club Field Day
> beams.  This is the second set of coax cables I've run across where
> the pigtails went bad, so what's the way to do them properly?
> 
> I'm using ferrite choke baluns for my own stuff, but can't convince
> the powers that be that they'll work just as well as coils of coax,
> and are a lot cleaner.
> 
> 73, doug
> 
> 
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