[TowerTalk] Can 1/4" or 3/8" Andrew SUPERFLEX be used for a Rotor loop?

[jimlux]

On 7/17/20 4:20 AM, Bill Steffey NY9H wrote:
> Did anyone look at the M&P ( Italy) site ?
> 
> 
> I've been involved for 20+ years with several divisions of what was CDT 
> ( Mohawk, Montrose, West Penn Wire  etc) now merged into Belden Corp. 
> Observed many braiding & bunching machines in operation.  I always 
> understood that many of the best fabricating machines in the wire 
> industry were made in Italy.  I drew a conclusion that coax form ITALY 
> very well could be the best. That said , I watched several coax 
> connector assembly videos provided BY M&P , and was surprised to see 
> they suggest you do NOT solder the shield on either N type for PL-259. 
> They must believe that the compression is adequate.  Why do I think that 
> could be a warming while running that EXPERT KW ??????
> 

I think there's ample info out there that says that compression 
connections (if properly made) are far superior to soldered connections. 
The challenge is the "properly made" - I've not done big 1/2" coax, just 
RG-58, microwave semi-rigid and regular old stranded wire. For all of 
those, if you have the right tool, it's easy to make a good compression 
connection that is gas tight, stands up to temperature cycling and 
vibration, etc. I would imagine that the bigger connectors and cables 
are the same.

However, it requires tooling specifically for your application, it isn't 
necessarily cheap, and so forth.  If you're doing a few connectors a 
month or year, as a hobby, it's hard to justify several hundred bucks 
for a set of tools to cover all connectors and cable sizes.  I think 
that's where soldering has its place (or ordering premade cables!)

When I was making dozens of cables in a day - it was easily worth the 
money, especially for the RG58 BNCs for Thin Ethernet. Spin the stripper 
around the cable, load the ferrule and connector, crimp, done. If it 
took 30 seconds it was probably because I was distracted.  Same if 
you're doing F connectors on RG-6 or RG-59.  There's no way I could have 
soldered on a connector that fast, especially if I had to wait for the 
iron to heat. And, in any case, that horrible polyethylene dielectric 
would have melted.