Howdy,


I kept the iso-tip iron in my briefcase. It heats fast
and I don't regret having bought it. When the batteries
went bad I no longer had a use for it. So it ended up
somewhere... can't remember where. The ceramic fell out
of the tips on me too. I think the engineers at Wahl
should have talked to someone at Cotronics.

I got tired of tightening the tips on the guns and bought
an 80W "pencil." A studly iron, suitable for soldering
sheets of copper and bus bars. For me the next step up
from this is a torch. It's only 80W so at first blush
I expected a higher wattage gun to work better but there's
a lot more thermal mass in the iron. The copper tip is
a slug about 1/2" dia and 1-1/4" lg. It makes fast work
of PL259's.

I like the tubing cutter technique if the coax has enough
braid. Some of the junky stuff I just flood the connector
with solder through the connector's holes and mostly it
works. I've tried wrapping the scant braid with fine wire
first which may help. Buying or scrounging good quality
coax with decent braid coverage is the best answer.

I thought the crimper for PL259's (on RG8 size coax) was
a great idea but after reading some reviews and looking
at the photos of cracks in the connector I'm not so sure.
I thought of buying a set of dies and fixing them to a
hefty arbor press I have in the garage. Though soldering
has proved reliable and I like reliable.


73,
Grumpy





ken scharf wrote in
:


I remember the Wahl 'iso tip' battery irons. Nice portable tool for
field repairs (but useless for field day PL-259 assembly!). Only
problems were battery and tip replacement. The tips would eventually
fall apart as the ceramic insulation surrounding the heating element
cracked.

As for field day, once I figured out how to quickly assemble PL259's
onto RG8U, I got drafted by the radio club to handle this duty at
field day. (Strip back about 4" of outer insulation, tin the braid
with a HOT soldering gun (I used the BIG Weller gun), file down the
excess solder, cut down the braid with a tubing cuter or a razer saw,
remove the center insulation, cut the center conductor to size and tin
it, then slip the coupling ring over the coax and screw on the
connector, then solder it home (with the BIG Weller gun again!). Took
about 4 minutes per connector.