[TowerTalk] Good and cheap F-BNC adapters

Dan Zimmerman N3OX n3ox at n3ox.net
Sun Aug 5 19:03:09 EDT 2007


I went out to Home Depot and got some fittings, RG-6 quad shield
(swept to 3GHz), and the compression tool, so I'm in business mostly
for using RG-6 and F connectors.  The one thing I don't have at this
point are adapters to go from the F-type connectors to my gear and
antennas, many of which use BNC fittings (I have some nice surplus BNC
Dow-Key antenna switches).

Any suggestions for a relatively cheap source of good quality BNC-F
adapters?  Mostly I want BNC male to F-Female.  I found one online
store that had them for $0.74 apiece, but the store didn't seem to get
very good reviews on sites that rate online shopping sources, plus I
don't know if there's particular variation in adapter quality.

I remember a discussion about right angle adapters some time ago that
suggested there were very good, practically lossless ones and ones
that were quite lossy because they used a spring to make contact..  Is
that particular to right angle adapters and the difficulty of
assembling a good one or should I be cautious across the board?

In a related question, some people mentioned BNC connectors that can
be installed on RG-6... do you know if they're designed to use the
same tool as compression-type F connectors?  I found some that look
promising but I don't want to buy some and find out that I don't have
the tool.  Right now I have a budget F crimper that's so-so and the
Data Shark compression tool from Home Depot which actually seems quite
solid (especially for $15!!).

I don't have a ratchet crimper for crimp-type connectors, but honestly
the compression type ones seem cleaner anyway.  I've found that the
RG-59 crimp type connectors can be crimped and soldered to RG-58 for
building twelfth-wave transformers for the situations where I care
about SWR, but other than that I'm going to stay away from them.

Dan


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