[TowerTalk] Soldering Coax Connectors

[john at kk9a.com]

While I cannot say that installing coax connectors is a task that I  
enjoy, I believe that having a good soldering iron with PL-259s makes  
things much easier and better. I use an American Beauty with a huge tip.

John KK9A



Fred Matos W3ICM wrote:

On soldering PL-259 connectors...
I was mostly inactive for a long time, and just got very active two years ago.
One of the things that I hate in ham radio is soldering PL-259  
connectors, even though I have made many thousands of  QSOs using coax  
with probably poorly soldered connectors that worked okay.
In the past, I used the specs from the ARRL Handbook, which I was told  
are actually Amphenol specs.  It's the shield soldering that  
challenging.
This time I decided to find an easy way to solder the connectors, so I  
did a YouTube search.
My search resulted in about 20 hits, with guys showing their preferred  
way of soldering the connectors.  Unfortunately, there was very little  
commonality among their methods.   I was looking for a simple method,  
but some methods are very complicated.   Some involve rapid cool down  
of the connector after soldering.
I have tried the K3LR method which is a major change in the  
shield-soldering procedure.
I am moving on to crimp connectors to make life easier.

73
Fred W3ICM and YI3DX