21 May 2008

Magmount base, one more fix

New problem on the new magmount base: the PL-259 connector.

Moving the coax cable right at the plug sent SWR from 1:1 to infinite. This is a sign either of a short or a broken connection.

Heated the soldering iron and found out two things:
  1. it was a short caused by erroneous (criminal?) coax preparation
  2. the crimp-on section for the coax braid was loose and I could pull the coax out with no effort
I re-peeled the coax and replaced the PL-259. Now it works.

Morale: if you care about your finals, check the plug assembling quality on your new magmount base!

Now I wonder how bulky the pseudo RG58 coax is! Will do some measurements soon.