Roy Lewallen wrote in
:

I've never seen a correctly assembled connector come off.



Another story, but with a different outcome.

I worked in a training school at one stage, and we thought we would get
trainees to make up BNC RG58 patch cables as a practical exercise, and we
would feed the output into our satellite labs where cables didn't seem to
last long (trainees pulled equipment trolleys around by the coax if it
didn't reach the desired socket).

Total failure, the BNC field serviceable connectors were just too
complicated for dissinterested trainees more interested in discussing
fast cars than concentrating on the job... and they had no stake in it,
if the cables didn't work, it didn't matter too much.

Solving the problem of the connectors pulling off led me to the Amphenol
specs, and I found that the pull out spec for the field serviceable
connectors was *much* lower than the spec for the crimp connectors.

So, I bought a quality crimp tool (in those days, it was a few hundred
dollars), and some Kings crimp connectors, and we switched the classes to
use the crimp components and a trim jig. The outcome was much better,
fewer faulty cables, and the crimped cable retention was much better and
consistently so.

No I know that one of the large suppliers to hams advertises "crimped,
not soldered", but that is just a blatant case of playing to the market.
A bit like the single core 4:1 Guanella balun that manufacturers
attribute to Sevik's assurance that it will work fine on a fully floating
load... whan antenna system is a fully floating load. The theme is the
customer is always right, if he wants something that doesn't make sense,
see Rule 1.

An interesting new connector type is the "compression connectors", "Snap-
n-Seal" is a proprietary name. I tried some of these on RG6, and a bit
suspicious of the cable retention mechanism, every one I tested using
different types of RG6 (including QS), hung on until the cable tore apart
some distance from the connector.

Owen