Do they make a Sma to BNC adapter?

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lawman210

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I have a Sma connector on my mobile antenna for the Home patrol 1 and I believe the new BCD 536 will have a BNC connector. Is there am adapter or will I have to snip and replace?

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pyro424

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yes

Yes of course they make a SMA to BNC adapter. In fact all of Unidens previous scanners with SMA such as the BCD-396XT came with a SMA to BNC adapter right in the box. I imagine Unidens new SMA type antenna scanners will come with an adapter in the box also.

BTW: I am happy they have gone with the SMA style connector on their radio's. It is so much better than BNC. BNC gives nothing but problems. It is best they have SMA and then if you wish to use BNC then stick on the adapter. BNC always without fail becomes a problem after some use.
 
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jaspence

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sma to bnc

sma is fine for small, light antennas, , but you cannot connect regular coax to it very easily without putting a lot of strain on the connector or using a very thin coax and adapters. Using adapters can be the cause of poor connections and signal loss.
 

lawman210

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I am assuming the BNC side is a female but not being scanner savy is the Sma needed to go onto the Hp1 considered a male or female?

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pyro424

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sma is fine for small, light antennas, , but you cannot connect regular coax to it very easily without putting a lot of strain on the connector or using a very thin coax and adapters. Using adapters can be the cause of poor connections and signal loss.

Yes I agree with everything you said. But in my opinion for a handheld radio application the SMA connector is the only way to go.
 

zz0468

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...Using adapters can be the cause of poor connections and signal loss.

Old wives tale.

The loss from even a mediocre Chinese adapter below 1 GHz is likely to be less than 0.1 db per adapter. I've made actual calibrated measurements, and the loss from an individual adapter is completely insignificant.

The real issue is if a heavy cable type such as LMR400 is adapted directly to an SMA connector, the weight and stiffness of the cable could damage the SMA connector on the radio. Inserting a short piece of RG-58 type cable with the appropriate connectors will mitigate that problem, and won't introduce a significant amount of loss.
 

lawman210

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I have RG58 coax. Standard Maxrad antenna cable. The electronics store. Most popular in my area (not radio shack, most of the employees staffed in Radio Shack these days says "huh" when you ask "do you have any CB'S?") put a Sma plus on my untipped Maxrad antenna and cable and said nothing about it not working correctly. They did mention that if my cable (prior to seeing it) was a strand coax they would have a hard time putting it in the connector but said the solid wire was fine.

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awattam

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Mobile antenna to BNC

When I used to have a Uniden Bcd396xt and wanted to hook up my mobile antenna, I preferred to use a SMA to BNC `pigtail connector' to prevent any strain on the scanners SMA connection. I think I paid $15 from Ham Radio Outlet. I did have a Radio Shack scanner's BNC connector come right off in the past.
 
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