[TowerTalk] Commscope SFX-500 cnnectors

[Jim Brown]

Hi Gerald,

You make a good point, BUT -- I've heard nightmare stories from good 
engineers sourcing products from Chinese sources, evaluating samples, 
and early shipments that looked great, worked great, tested really well, 
and then a few shipments later getting stuff that looked nothing like 
the original product, or that were unsatisfactory in important ways.

If you as a vendor are able to do that testing and guarantee that those 
products are first quality, and that they remain first quality, that's 
fine. But that's easier said than done -- how much incoming QC can you 
afford to do (or are you capable of)?

Like Roger, I've encountered Amphenol 83-1SPs that were short a thread. 
Not a lot, perhaps 1%. It didn't make me happy.

Until recently, W2VJN advertised Amphenol connectors on his relay boxes. 
When I ordered them, he said he no longer did, and was using another 
"good" connector. Because he used the chassis as signal return rather 
than a continuous ground layer on the PC board, Because the VSWR got 
nasty above about 15M and I wanted to route my SteppIR through 2x1 box, 
I had to modify the 2x1 boxes to provide that path to clean up the VSWR. 
That meant I had to add braid from the shield ring to the PC board, and 
braid following the signal path. When I did that, I could no longer 
tighten down the connectors well, and they spun when I tightened the coax.

I've modified one of those boxes to replace the connectors with the 
4-hole flange connectors. It was a lot of work. So was fixing the 
circuit layout issue.

73, Jim K9YC

  On Mon,5/25/2015 12:45 PM, TexasRF--- via TowerTalk wrote:
> Hi Jim, I think you are being overly critical of the imported connectors
> and adapters. These days virtually all connectors come from China, regardless
> of  the brand.
>   
> There was a time, back maybe 10 years or more ago, that your criticism was
> warranted. There was certainly a lot of junk out there. In more recent
> years  several west coast wholesale connector supply companies have been
> offering  Chinese connectors with excellent quality, decent prices and quick
> delivery, usually from stock.
>   
> We resell these connectors to our customers and see very few problems  with
> them. I use them in my own station at frequencies up to 10 GHz and see no
> issues.
>   
> Even the right angle adapters work as expected; no internal springs for the
>   center conductor as reported in the past.
>   
> 73,
> Gerald Williamson K5GW
> GM Texas Towers
>   
>   
>   
> In a message dated 5/24/2015 8:37:00 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
> jim at audiosystemsgroup.com writes:
>
> On  Sun,5/24/2015 5:55 PM, Steve Maki wrote:
>> Right, and then using a  relatively inexpensive N to UHF adapter if you
>> need to get to the UHF  connector series.
> Quality (Amphenol) N to UHF adapters are NOT  inexpensive. The ones that
> ARE inexpensive are JUNK, and should be  avoided. When I got back on the
> air around 2003 after a long absence, I  filled my junkbox with these
> JUNK connectors, and soon lived to regret it.  Over the next 3-5 years, I
> experienced at least six failures that were the  result of those JUNK
> connectors.
>
> Do yourself a favor -- don't buy  no-name connectors. I'm talking about
> those pretty, shiny connectors sold  at hamfests, and, sadly, by most
> vendors who advertise in QST and CQ. We  must go to vendors like Allied,
> Newark, and DigiKey to get the real  deal.
>
> 73, Jim  K9YC
>
>
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