Newsletter of the Silverado Amateur Radio Society

The next meeting of SARS will be on July 17^th, 7:30 PM in the Lee Lounge, at the Veterans Home in Yountville. Bring a friend.

Meeting Program: WA6BIS will discuss repeaters access using tones such as CTCSS and DTMF
PL, Tone Squelch and much more

In the January issue we put up an article describing a "different" way of terminating coaxial cable on PL259s. Read it here. This month I'd like to show you one reason why the "different" method might be the way to go. I was going through some coax jumpers a few days ago getting ready for field day and decided to check them out with my new MFJ analyzer. More than one of the jumpers were of questionable quality but this one not only had an open shield but the impedance was off the scale. Here's what I found:

When a feedline is made up in this manner and is designed to "dangle" from the center connector, the solder on the braid is really the only thing that keeps the cable from pulling loose from the connector. The center conductor won't hold it; I've seen 50 feet or more slip on the center conductor.

In this example, the jacket, and the shield had pulled back was almost clear of the connector shell. Not only is there no metallic connection, but water was allowed to intrude changing the impedance drastically. Not that that mattered at this point.

The photo on the left shows how 3 of the 4 solder holes look. There is no shield braid visible through the hole. None, nada. The photo on the right shows the only solder on the connector; it flicked off with a brush from my penknife. The braid was missing in action. A quick disclaimer: I did not make this jumper and if I knew who did I would not reveal his name but I would suggest a few things. First of all, you need a big, hot, slobbering iron (Ronism) to heat the shell of the connector. Next month I'll show you an interesting method I use to get the shell hot. Also important, the braid must be tinned before you fit the connector over it. You only have seconds to make the connection once the solder starts to flow. If you get things too hot the coax will be damaged. It helps to have a clamp on your workbench to hold the cable still while you work on it. It needs to remain stationary while things cool off. Also important (IMHO) is this: The manufacturer, at least the good ones, put 4 holes in the connector for a reason. The reason is not to give you a choice of which one to solder. No no no! You should solder all four of these holes so that the "bump in the line" as seen by the RF is no bigger than it needs to be. You should see what some connectors look like on a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) A properly installed N-connector is barely noticeable at HF. A properly installed PL-259 is quite noticeable at HF and at UHF it looks huge! This one would have looked like train wreck.

Technicians: Ten Reasons to Upgrade! Actually, you only need one and here it is in a nutshell. An unedited testimonial from a recent upgrade.

I had the most fun I have ever had on the radio last night.

I started out on 10 meters I made several contacts all over the map, then I switched to 6 meters where they were lined up to talk to me. I found what it is like to be on the receiving end of a pileup. I made about 20 contacts before I got tired and shut down.

Catch ya later

Farrell, N5EZE

For those who don't know Farrell, he moved from Napa to Nambe, New Mexico a couple of years ago. He recently upgraded to General and has been having a ball. He has been working on his antenna farm and will soon be heard on all the bands including 160 meters. His California call was K6EZY.

by N6XN Well, Field Day is over for another year. How'd we do? It depends on who you ask. AC6LE didn't have any propagation on 15 so he says he won't be back until things improve. I heard that from a lot of people, Don. Ti Michelle and Bob Vallio stopped by to say howdy and they said all the groups were having the same problem: no propagation.
But that wasn't the case on 40 meters. Both Bob (N6OFB) and I heard lots of stations. It seemed to me that everyone who wasn't able to work the higher bands came down to 40. The entire period was very busy with the stronger stations jammed by callers. It sounded like a DX pileup at times. Things never quieted down on 40, not even in the "wee hours". The Slinky antenna seemed to work just fine although my totals this year were pretty poor. The equipment worked great it was just a lot of waiting for elbow room in the crowds. Most of the time I was able to get through on just one or two calls but we needed lots of fills because of the severe QSB and QRM. How did the rest of you do? Drop me a line or give me a call, I'm sure our readers would like to know. Photos

The SARS scrapbook has been digitized and put on the web. It's been on Yahoo for a couple of years but was not very accessible.
Yahoo recently notified us that they are discontinuing their photo storage service so I migrated the files to a better web site. Check it out at the link above and let me know what you think. Most of the photos and clippings have been captioned but there are a few that are unidentified. If you have any information on these captions please let me know. contact the editor. I'm also looking for additional photos for the years shown as well as the more recent period between 1970 and the present.