Ham rg-58 splice help and length help

[darticus]

HAM RG-58 SPLICE HELP AND LENGTH HELP

I hooked up a used 2 meter antenna in my porch so I can just pull up the SMA connector from the floor and use my newly roof mounted antenna. After I ran everything I found a cut in my coax and don't know if I should trust it but I don't want to run a new wire and waste this. It seems to be working fine but think I should splice it at this cut so it doesn't go any further. Any thoughts of a splice method or who sells a good splicer for rg-58 coax.
The other part of this is that it seems that we don't pay much attention on Ham to check SWR like on CB. Is there a reason for not being as concerned as on CB? I ran the RG-58 cable about 75 feet and added ends. Should the coax be a certain length. Should I be concerned with SWR for this 2 meter antenna set up. I'm using mostly a YAESU VX-7R in my portable porch location. Thanks Ron

 

[exkalibur]

Get some good BNC connectors (or even better, TNC as they can be threaded together) and a double female connector. Don't bother with the PL-259 style - those connectors are generally garbage.

 

[jhooten]

A slice in the jacket or the cable cut all the way through? If it is just a cut in the jacket wrap it with electrical tape and call it good.

 

[W2NJS]

Darticus wrote above:

"The other part of this is that it seems that we don't pay much attention on Ham to check SWR like on CB. Is there a reason for not being as concerned as on CB?"


Your "take" on checking SWR for hams vs. CBers is completely wrong. Most hams don't use SWR bridges; they use much more expensive units called wattmeters. My Bird 4350 set me back $550 when I bought it several years ago. I know very few hams who don't own at the very least a good SWR bridge but most of them have Bird's basic model 43 wattmeter or something better.

 

[prcguy]

If the cut in the coax does not penetrate the braid and dialectic then you can probably just tape or heat shrink it and forgetaboutit as mentioned previously.

Splicing coax is usually done with connectors and double female adapters, not actually soldering the two pieces together. Radio Shack used to make a solderless splicer for RG-58 but it was not very good and the connections usually became intermittent.

Most 2m specific antennas are factory tuned and are not affected much by their surroundings due to the shorter wavelength vs vehicle ground plane, etc, unlike a CB antenna which can change drastically with each install.

Also, 75ft of RG-58 is fairly lossy and you will loose a little more than half your power (receive and transmit) on 2m. In fact, its so lossy that if you disconnect the antenna and measure the VSWR it will be around 2.5:1 without the antenna due to the coax absorbing signal on the way to the antenna and also absorbing some of the reflected power back to the radio. You might get more contacts if you upgrade to a lower loss cable or drastically shorten the run.

Except for loss there is no specific length of coax to use on any antenna at any frequency unless the coax is designed as an actual part of the antenna or the antenna is poorly designed and not decoupled from the coax.
prcguy