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
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