[Yaesu] What is wrong with SMA?

[Steve Harrison]

At 02:27 PM 1/9/2007 -0500, Rudy Marcelletti wrote:
>BNC has a greater connect/disconnect life cycle than SMA and is more rugged
>and faster to connect/disconnect.  I read somewhere that average life of SMA
>is roughly 300 or so cycles of connect/disconnect and BNC is in the 1,000's.
>People want smaller, yet feature packed radios every year, so SMA was added
>to this end.  It's not like we are constantly connecting and disconnecting
>antennas and if you are, you need another HT and/or a mobile rig.  Rudy,
>K8SWD

I will agree with all that except that I wonder just what is considered
"end-of-life" for BNC. As I said, we easily wore them out on a spectrum
analyzer within a year. I'd estimate we may have done an average of 10
connect cycles per day although at times it was way more, and occasionally
way less.

And I believe the EOL point for either connector would be marked when it
would no longer meet the published specs. Since SMA has published specs up
to 18 GHz (some higher), they will obviously easily meet specs at 1/10th
and especially 1/100th of the max rated frequency, at least in terms of
return loss, with far more cycles.

Steve, K0XP