[TowerTalk] PL-259s

[Jim Thomson]

## Im late to the PL-259 soldering party.  I find those Amphenol nickel plated connectors a real pita to solder.
A few years ago,  I bought 2  doz van gorden   silver /  teflon connectors.  Now that’s the only thing that van gordon sold
that was actually any good.   Silver plated  body and silver plated  barrel.  I  use a 100 w  american beauty iron..which has
a .375 inch main body on the tips.... IE: the part that goes into the iron.   The tip is a tapered down chisel tip.   We used
hundreds of these irons back in my telco days...  up to about  mid 80s, then  everything went to wire wrap, then later to 
quick connect punch downs.   You can also get an  AB  150w  replacement element that slides  right into any  100 w AB iron. 

## The tapered down chisel tip and correct diam solder  works really good on any of these silver plated connectors. 
I have loads of  solder..in 1 lb rolls....and in many different diameters.  Real small stuff for pc boards....and bigger stuff 
for bigger jobs. 

##  Dunno if  amphenol makes a  silver  /teflon connector, but that would be a winner.   I gave up on the nickel plated
connectors a few years back, they require way too much heat... which is a pita if anything other than teflon is used
for the dielectric.     A buddy years ago told me how they made commercial cable assys..and they used a 900  watt iron ! 
Bam, done.   The small  40 watt irons, with their small tips, just don’t have enough heat to solder a  nickel plated connector,
without melting the dielectric on  foam coax, etc. 

##  They should have made the  4 x holes in the barrel of these  connectors  oval shaped,  or used bigger diam holes. 
Some have drilled the holes  out  a tiny bit bigger...but then you lose the plating. 

##  I bought a crimper,  so can now crimp instead.   I use that setup for crimping male   7-16 Silver /teflon connectors
onto  RG-393 coax.    I can also do  crimped  PL-259s  onto 213  /  393  etc. 

##  american beauty also makes even bigger irons, like  585 watt etc.  They use a .50 inch tip..used for  soldering
copper  tubing instead of using a blow torch.   I thought of that when  soldering to  .25  and  .375 and also .50  cu 
tubing and wide cu strap connections.  Dumped that  idea, and  went to machine screw  connections  on the ends 
of the flatten’d tubing.   Ditto when wrappin cu strap around  cu tubing, machine screws used to cinch the cu straps
tight to the tubing.   A  100  w  AB iron does not have enough heat to solder  cu tubing, only the bigger irons will work.    

later... Jim   VE7RF