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Re: [TowerTalk] Soldering Iron, Connectors, Cable

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Soldering Iron, Connectors, Cable
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: jim@audiosystemsgroup.com
Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 13:52:50 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On Tue,5/10/2016 1:18 PM, Bryan Swadener via TowerTalk wrote:
The idea that only Amphenol produces good quality connectors is
not correct. There are others. DX Engineering supplies top-shelf
connectors and adapters at reasonable cost.

Unless you are in the position of a mfr or vendor to buy and test samples from known mfrs, or have worked for a mfr who has done that, you're in no position to know whether a mfr's product is good or not, let alone "top shelf." The electronic products I've seen from DXE are of good quality, but I've not seen their connectors or cables.

Others have touted The RF Connection as a source of good quality connectors at 
reasonable cost.

That may be, but they sell a lot of JUNK connectors too. When I got back on the air around 2003, I filled my parts box with 5-10 each of the 5-8 pin DIN connectors they were selling. They were junk -- metal that wouldn't take solder, dielectric that melted under minimal heat from a good iron.

In the same time frame, I also stocked up on lots of low cost coax connector adapters, barrels, elbows, and Tees at Chicago area hamfests, typically paying $2-$4 each. In the four years that followed, I learned the hard way that those connectors were JUNK -- they fell apart, overheated, went intermittent, and outright failed -- each time causing me lots of grief in troubleshooting the problem. A $12 connector or adapter seems expensive, until you've crawled through an attic, along a coax run, or climbed a tower to find a $4 piece of junk.

  They seem to have a wide selection.

Yes. They also sell Amphenol, and a broad selection of hard line connectors they have been able to find. But I will no longer do biz with them because I learned that they pulled what I consider to be a very dirty trick on their employee who I dealt with on a large group purchase several years ago.

73, Jim K9YC
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