[Elecraft] OT: Checking coax jumpers before soldering

[Joel Black]

Frank,

I use an Anritsu SiteMaster at work to detect such things with hardline 
and coax. It comes with a 50 ohm load for testing feedline. I don't know 
how you'd set up an amateur-style antenna analyzer to do such. When I'm 
looking for faults, I specifically set it to " Return Loss - DTF 
(Distance To Fault)."

If you have a station dummy load, you could use that. The one I built 
from Oak Hills Research is a little bulky, but would do the trick I think.

73,
Joel - W4JBB

On 11/12/13, 12:41 AM, Frank Precissi wrote:
> This is along the same lines of the PL-259 connector soldering.  Although
> off topic for this group some collective wisdom might help someone other
> than myself in the future.
>
> How can you check to see if coax is still "good"?  Sure we can test for
> shorts with a multimeter, but if the coax has been crushed and the
> dielectric has been deformed, obviously things will be wonky when we put RF
> through it.
>
> Is it possible to short one connector with a 50ohm resistor, then on the
> other end attaching an antenna analyzer and sweep the ham bands looking for
> obvious SWR changes?  I mean to me (read: newbie when it comes to this) it
> should show a flat 50ohms across the bands, correct?
>
> I have a few spools of 100' RG8X that I'm sure have been slammed in a
> sliding glass door more than once.  No sign of any trauma on the jacket or
> shorts, but I cant tell if the dielectric has been mangled inside.  I
> really don't want to blindly ditch perfectly good coax.
>
> Any tricks of the trade when it comes to this?
>
> 73
>
> Frank
> KG6EYC
>
>