Brian Kelly wrote:
I've never been happy with monster irons either, but have had very good
results using a hot-air gun as 'pre-heat' for my regular 45W Weller.

It's very easy to judge how long to pre-heat the whole connector body.
Then the regular small iron has plenty of power to make a good, clean
joint in the solder holes. The same technique is also good for fine
soldering work on large lumps of metal.

That's clever, I have a heat gun (somewhere), I'll try it. Sounds like
the method might reduce the total number of BTUs/calories absorbed by
the dielectric which has always been a concern here. Barbequed coax is
very annoying.

If you prefer your PVC under-cooked, wrap some aluminum foil around
it... and don't point the heat gun that way :-)


The bonus is that a hot-air gun is much cheaper than a large iron, and
you can also use it for other things too, like heat-shrink tubing. (Did
somebody mention removing old paint? What's this "paint" stuff? :-)

It isn't a technique to use at the top of a tower... but there isn't
*any* good way to do heavy soldering under those conditions.

. . . propane torch . .

Yeah, right...


--
73 from Ian G3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek