[HCARC] Type "N" Connector Questions

[Kerry Sandstrom]

Gary and Eddie,

DoD's (and yes, it is DoD now and not DOD) goal was to eliminate soldering entirely.  As far back as the 70's, the connectors of all types in the supply system were crimp connectors.  I can't be positive, but I think the center conductors didn't require soldering but they were not crimp, just a tight mechanical fit.  As I said, I can't be sure.  In any event, we went through a lot of cable all with either type-N or type-BNC connectors and I don't recall ever seeing my techs (Ground Radio Repair,304xx) use a soldering iron on them.  A second goal of DoD was to have only one crimp tool for everything and one cable stripper.  There was no measuring required and we never had a problem with the new connectors.  If you stick with MIL spec connectors, you should only need a couple different crimp tools.  If you get commercial versions, I think some of the companies make their money on special crimp tools for their proprietary connectors! 

Personnally I use the older style "clamp" type -N ( as well as all other RFconnectors) because with a little care I can reuse them.  I haven't figured out how to reuse crimp connectors, yet.  Yes, I'm really a ham and hate to throw anything away!  A second reason is the solder types are a little more tolerant of different cable types such as RG-213/U and RG-214/U which are essentially the same dimensions but not exactly.  The crimp style connectors seem less tolerant.  

The new designation for an "N" male is M39012/01 The most common one for RG-8/U size cable is UG-21/U.  "N" jack to UHF plug adaptor is UG-83/U and "N"plug to UHF jack is UG-146/U.  Often you'll see an extra letter, UG-83B/U or UG-146A/U.  The extra letter indicates design variations but I haven't had any problems using any of the variations.

Kerry