RadioBanter - View Single Post

January 21st 05, 06:35 AM

wrote:
Well, I just got rg 8 cable about 20 feet for free! The thing about it
it has two pl259 connectors on it. I need to have one end free so i can
wire up the slim jim or j pole I build this weekend. I really do not
eant to cut the cable as I would like to use it when I put the
permanent station up. See any way around this?

Can I use copper house wire 12/ 2 or so to connect to the points on the
j pole then bring them to a so connector Then screw the rg8 pl
connector into that?

Yep, that's the right way to do it. Keep the copper wires as short as
possible. Try to find a way to physically fasten the shell of the SO239
connector directly to the point where the shield side of the coax would
go, eliminating the house wire on that side altogether if possible.

Will this through off the swr?

It will, but if you keep the wire short the difference will be
negligible. Try to keep it shorter than 2 inches if at all possible.

What ohms is 12/2 wire?

The wire itself has no impedance.

Two pieces of wire in proximity, and near the rest of the antenna, will
exhibit a characteristic impedance. This will be difficult to predict -
and unimportant if the length of the wires is kept short.

He also gave me a short cable with two pl 259 connectors to connect
between my radio and the swr meter. It was a guy at a motorola dealer.
This cable is pretty thin and not rg8 but he said it was 50 ohms.
I plan on hooking the 20 feet from the swr to the antenna.

For the purposes of setting up the match, the "thickness" of the cable
between the radio and the SWR meter is not very important. It may cause
power loss, but as long as there's enough power to operate the SWR meter
it doesn't matter. It may cause the SWR at the radio to be lower than
that at the antenna, but it won't affect the SWR at the SWR meter which
is where you're measuring it.
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com