[UK-CONTEST] Connectors

[David]

The big advantage of the PL259 over the N type is the centre pin. 

I had a failure of an N type socket and plug on my 375 watt 2M amplifier
because the inner of the coax (W103) shrunk compared to the outer and pulled
the pin out of contact with the socket. The resulting arc burnt up the
socket centre and the plug pin. Having no spare N type sockets I changed
both to UHF and got on with the contest. Been like that since. 

The PL259 centre pin is soldered over a large area compared to N type pins
and is very difficult to mechanically extract from the plug. The N type pin
is designed to come out and therefore has little resistance to extraction.

The braid clamp PL259 is mechanically a superior connector and good enough
electrically up to at least 150MHz. At higher frequencies the length of the
connector becomes a significant fraction of the wavelength then a better
grade of connector needs to be used if a lower return loss is required. 

73 David G3YYD