Bob wrote:
Hello,

Senior citizen that enjos HF and vhf/uhf listening, but frankly not very
technical.

A few years back, I had to order some bnc, etc. connectors.
Ordered from supposedly popular source who said they had it all in
stock, and had to wait weeks and weeks to get it as they obviously
didn't. Would sure like to avoid that kind of experience again.

Do listening only.

So, please let me ask you folks:

for sma and bnc connectors, as well as preassembled (bnc or sma on the
ends)short (3 ft or so) coax assemblies, who do you recommend as being
reasonably priced (I'll use reasonably rather than cheap) and usually
having in stock ?

For short lengths of coax, and listening only up thru the scanner
freq's, what coax should I go for that would be inexpensive ?
RG 8x, RG 59, or...?) What to stay away from ?

Again, I need something "usable" up to about 1.5 GHZ or so,
listening only.

Thanks,
Bob

Use 75 ohm Cable TV coax (RG-6 and similar).. All you'll need to buy
that's at all unusual is appropriate F:whatever adapters for each end.
The foam dielectric coax is low loss, will have male F connectors
already on it in a variety of lengths, etc. Available everywhere.

For the adapters, try Mouser, Digikey, Newark, or Allied for regular
mailorder, or perhaps something like L-com or Pasternak for a more
specialty, or the various surplus places. BNC M to F Female run about
$2 from L-com. Radio Shack carries some adapters, but in-store stock is
variable.

For a receive application, the small impedance mismatch probably won't
be a big deal, unless you're looking for the last tenth of a dB of noise
figure.