Coax Jumper

[MUTNAV]

Well, if that price was correct then they are obviously using some good drugs. No way I'd pay that for a jumper. Getting the crimpers to make them yourself is a great idea. I bought mine twenty years ago and now I make all my own coaxes exactly to length. I've been doing full crimp connectos for about ten years now, so no soldering involved. I've used them indoors and out and never had one go bad. I use the connectors from RF Industries and prep the coax with a scalpel and then crimp away. I also put some heat shrink on all of them for strain relief and to make them look nice.

I used to hate crimp connectors.... A long time ago, after getting pretty good with the solder type, everything else seemed flimsy.

After a few years though, NASA started using and allowing the crimp type connectors, so I guess with proper tools and connectors, (and techniques)they can be done really good now. The tools and appropriate connector information is available online now.

 

[VK6NCB]

I used to hate crimp connectors.... A long time ago, after getting pretty good with the solder type, everything else seemed flimsy.

After a few years though, NASA started using and allowing the crimp type connectors, so I guess with proper tools and connectors, (and techniques)they can be done really good now. The tools and appropriate connector information is available online now.

I must have installed over a thousand crimp connectors, and as far as I am aware, none have failed yet. Its a 50/50 blend between mining machinery and 4wd utes on minesites (with a tiny bit of repeater and non-mining gear)

Just gotta have the right tooling, prep things right and double check everything

 

[MUTNAV]

Y

I must have installed over a thousand crimp connectors, and as far as I am aware, none have failed yet. Its a 50/50 blend between mining machinery and 4wd utes on minesites (with a tiny bit of repeater and non-mining gear)

Just gotta have the right tooling, prep things right and double check everything

Yup... As I said, NASA accepts and encourages their use, now... To me they are the gold standard for insisting on reliable connectors. In the past, crimp connections were generally considered kind of sloppy. My guess is that they were related in peoples minds, to spade lugs...

In the past (as I said a reasonably long time ago, although I'm clearly younger than most other people here) when walking into an equipment shelter at a new base, any patch cords that had crimp connectors had their ends cut off and solder type (which we all had a lot of experience with) were put in their place. No one needed to wonder whether a problem was from equipment or the patch cord. Like anything, it depends on the quality of the connectors instillation, which comes from experience.

The original reason for improving the reliability of soldering and connectors was the (I believe) Mercury and Gemini programs... When things failed and investigations were done to find the cause of the failure. The use of just blobbing solder on connections was found to be a major problem. Hence NASA standard classes were done, and I'm not positive, but for military a slightly lower quality of "High reliability" classes, were established.

 

[prcguy]

Wow that's pricey.

Honestly for that price you could buy coax, connectors and the crimp tooling to make your own
It's worth learning, because you won't want just one jumper as you grow in this hobby.
I must have made dozens of jumpers in RG58 LMR240 and LMR400.
The investment in crimpers is well worth it

If you use LMR cable and Times EZ connectors then assemble with the Times cable prep tool you can make excellent cables that sweep perfect past 6GHz. Even a child can make them and they will be perfect. Instead of paying $30+ for connectors I get them new in package off eBay when the price gets down to about $8. The Times cable prep tools for LMR 195, 240 or 400 can get below $100 on eBay new in box.

 

[prcguy]

I used to hate crimp connectors.... A long time ago, after getting pretty good with the solder type, everything else seemed flimsy.

After a few years though, NASA started using and allowing the crimp type connectors, so I guess with proper tools and connectors, (and techniques)they can be done really good now. The tools and appropriate connector information is available online now.

I spent 6mo of my life with a crew of 6 building a custom cable harness for a military jet aircraft. Soldering any connector was illegal and all connections for multi pin M/S or RF connectors was crimp only. Each crimp must use a calibrated crimp tool that got calibrated every 2 weeks and each crimped connection goes through a calibrated pull test. Crimp is absolutely the most reliable when done properly.

I believe this was the specific aircraft we made the harness for and the customer said it was the first one they ever had that was plug and play with no mistakes and they had plenty of custom harnesses made. I watched a crew use a saws all to cut the original nose off the aircraft then graft on the nose full of goodies on our aircraft although this nose is different and probably from a later project.

Part of our harness had to go external of the aircraft in a tube running down the side of the aircraft and the external harness was wrapped in an RF absorbing blanket.

 

[MUTNAV]

I spent 6mo of my life with a crew of 6 building a custom cable harness for a military jet aircraft. Soldering any connector was illegal and all connections for multi pin M/S or RF connectors was crimp only. Each crimp must use a calibrated crimp tool that got calibrated every 2 weeks and each crimped connection goes through a calibrated pull test. Crimp is absolutely the most reliable when done properly.

I believe this was the specific aircraft we made the harness for and the customer said it was the first one they ever had that was plug and play with no mistakes and they had plenty of custom harnesses made. I watched a crew use a saws all to cut the original nose off the aircraft then graft on the nose full of goodies on our aircraft although this nose is different and probably from a later project.

Part of our harness had to go external of the aircraft in a tube running down the side of the aircraft and the external harness was wrapped in an RF absorbing blanket.

View attachment 194698

It's funny that solder connections were illegal for you, even now they are ok for spaceflight.

Cool work, with the A-3 (thought it was an RB-66 till I looked it up).

Hopefully the navy didn't get their harnesses from the same place Luke AFB did in the early 80's. Apparently they were made in a prison as part of some work program. The avionics guys would just cut all of the connectors and redo them (admittedly, they ARE easy to mess up).

 

[prcguy]

It's funny that solder connections were illegal for you, even now they are ok for spaceflight.

Cool work, with the A-3 (thought it was an RB-66 till I looked it up).

Hopefully the navy didn't get their harnesses from the same place Luke AFB did in the early 80's. Apparently they were made in a prison as part of some work program. The avionics guys would just cut all of the connectors and redo them (admittedly, they ARE easy to mess up).

When I worked in aerospace, weapons (missile and aircraft radar/weapon parts) and space borne stuff was both soldered and crimped and space borne required NASA soldering certification and equivalent inspections, the highest level of training there is. Weapons have a very brief and violent lifespan and space borne has a very short but violent start then smooth sailing for the remainder of its life. Aircraft controls and comms have to live sometimes for 30+ years and human life depends on all parts working perfectly, maybe that’s why it’s treated a little different.

How did you guess I was in a prison work program?

Edit: Thinking about this a little more I would place CB RF coax jumpers in the same category as aircraft cables. You can’t ever have a failure in the middle of a contact. I can’t imagine interrupting “Yur commin in wall to wall tree top tall so crystal clear your transparent, come on!“ That would be life threatening.

I‘m back quiet.

 

[KF0NYL]

The US military use to have all kinds of work done by prison inmates when I was in. The California state prison use to rebuild all of the HMMV differentials when I was stationed at Ft Irwin, CA. We constantly had to check them and rework most of them before use. It didn't do any good to complain either.

After my experiences with the HMMV differentials, I would not want inmates works on anything aircraft related.

I have switched over to crimp connectors for my coax cables. I can solder tiny components and weld. But soldering coax connectors gives me fits.

 

[K6GBW]

PRCGuy, I give up...what aircraft is that thing? I see reference to the Douglas A-3 but it doesn't look like it. Is it some sort of re-fabrication for surveillance or something?

 

[K6GBW]

Disregard...I figured it out. That's a strange looking variant.

 

[prcguy]

PRCGuy, I give up...what aircraft is that thing? I see reference to the Douglas A-3 but it doesn't look like it. Is it some sort of re-fabrication for surveillance or something?

Disregard...I figured it out. That's a strange looking variant.

It’s an A-3 with a different nose stuck on. There is another A-3 that needed a VHF/UHF log periodic installed in the nose and the engineering team could not find one that fit. I recommended a Create 105-1300MHz version and they went to Juns Electronics ham store and bought two. With a few bends in the longest element it fit and the plane flew and fufilled its task. I don’t know how this relates to coax jumpers but there would have been one connecting to the log periodic.

I also built all the RF assemblies for a VHF/UHF/microwave radar in the A-3 with log periodic and none of the wiring was crimped on that one but it had nothing to do with human safety. I heard most of the radar modules got Velcro’d to the inside walls of the aircraft so I don’t know all the rules for aircraft installation.

 

[I_Am_Infinite]

As someone said for that price, they are definitely on drugs. I'm not sure bout them being good drugs though 🤣 especially rg58.

 

[K6GBW]

Jun's Electronics! I spent way too much time...and money there.

 

[MUTNAV]

It’s an A-3 with a different nose stuck on. There is another A-3 that needed a VHF/UHF log periodic installed in the nose and the engineering team could not find one that fit. I recommended a Create 105-1300MHz version and they went to Juns Electronics ham store and bought two. With a few bends in the longest element it fit and the plane flew and fufilled its task. I don’t know how this relates to coax jumpers but there would have been one connecting to the log periodic.

I also built all the RF assemblies for a VHF/UHF/microwave radar in the A-3 with log periodic and none of the wiring was crimped on that one but it had nothing to do with human safety. I heard most of the radar modules got Velcro’d to the inside walls of the aircraft so I don’t know all the rules for aircraft installation.

So pretty much whatever works... It's comforting to know that NASA can work with both crimp and solder (as long as the rules are followed), and they publish the requirements for each type.

The more practice a person gets with improving how they do connections the better.

Making your own jumpers, with either type of connector, seems like a low cost and easy way to improve a skill set (rather than starting with the antenna side of mast mounted antenna).