Not questioning that part - I'm talking about inside the bore of the connector (where the coax shield resides). You can file around the ring and inside the holes, but the solder has to flow onto the inside as well for a secure 360 degree bond.
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Soldering up PL-239's to Coax: The Best Way?
- Thread starter Robb
- Start date
Not questioning that part - I'm talking about inside the bore of the connector (where the coax shield resides). You can file around the ring and inside the holes, but the solder has to flow onto the inside as well for a secure 360 degree bond.
I guess I missed that the first time around. I'm not too sure I would want to take the advice of a beer induced shaky handed guy named Bubba that refers to installing connectors as "welding" them on. :laugh:
I agree about the new lead free solder crap. :thumbdown:
I pre-tin the shielded portion before assembly and it has a very nice bond, as a matter of fact if you wanted to reuse one of my 259's you would be out of luck as they are bonded so well.
Oh and yes and the shield goes completely to the end butting against the teflon separator where the center stand passes through as not to upset the ohms of the coax.
"Ohmie don't play dat"
Mack makes a very good point about the need for the shield to be well inserted all the way inside of the connector. As he suggested, this helps to minimize the ohm's bump that 259's are known to cause.
In my experience it is not always easy to get the end of the freshly dressed coax into the 259 that insures you've seated it all the way, so I use a dab of lube on the end of the coax cover that goes inside the connector. I also put a thin black mark around the tinned shield that ends-up visible in the middle of the solder hole when installed all the way.
I also don't try to heat the shield directly, I heat the connector around the hole and let the solder flow inside. The indirect heat should be enough for the thin copper shield to make a bond and not deform the dielectric below. A bulging solder joint in these holes is never a good job, the joint should always look counter sunk.
In order to disturb the impedance of a coax/connector, any gap between the end of the cable and the inside of the connector has to be a significant portion of a wavelength. At HF, a quarter-inch gap might be detectable on lab-grade instruments, but not on any field-grade stuff. Not even the mighty Bird 43.