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Technical Topics => The RF Workbench => Topic started by: i_hear_you on June 19, 2019, 1540 UTC

Title: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 19, 2019, 1540 UTC
Are 1/4" or 1/8" audio jacks and plugs contraindicated for field-swappable connections between coax connector and antenna terminals, or between coax connector, the coax ends of a toroid-wound choke and antenna terminals at QRP?  I'm looking for a way to quickly and easily swap or remove different chokes/baluns/isolators into the watertight junction box feedpoint of a vertical.

EDIT:

Same as above but with RCA?
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on June 19, 2019, 1638 UTC
I have no experience using 1/4" or 1/8" plugs, but lots of old ham gear used RCA plugs, I recall them being used to connect external VFOs to transmitters, for example.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 19, 2019, 1658 UTC
Thanks for the input.  It sounds like RCA is the way forward.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on June 19, 2019, 1718 UTC
My original antenna/radio patch board used BNC connectors, but I got tired of the short lifetime. I have since switched to F connectors. Now I think I maybe want to try RCA  :)   I may look for some deals on cheap F to RCA adapters and plug those in to the existing F connectors vs ripping everything apart (again).  I have some pictures of the patchboard here on the HFU: https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,47530.0.html
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 19, 2019, 1756 UTC
My original antenna/radio patch board used BNC connectors, but I got tired of the short lifetime. I have since switched to F connectors.

Could you elaborate on this?  Is BNC prone to relatively short mean time-to-failure?  I've started using ground-isolated BNC jacks for I/O to Altoids tins that house DC-isolation transformers, and BNC-to-wireforks for connecting to the terminals on the back of several receivers.  It's been working well, although the plastic threads and nut on the isolated jacks don't have much mechanical strength.  I'm considering super glueing them so the jack doesn't spin while attaching/detaching cable.

I had briefly considered using BNC for connections inside the junction box, but space is tight.  The RCA connectors will work perfectly.  I'm sourcing solder types for the coax connector and radiator/radial connections, and compression types for the coax ends of my chokes/transformers.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on June 19, 2019, 1814 UTC
Yeah, depending on the connector you can easily start getting loose connections after a few hundred cycles - I did. You can get there very quickly if you switch antennas around a few times a day to check things out.

Not sure what the lifetime of RCA connectors is. In my case I will be putting adapters on the existing F connectors, so if one were to fail, I could easily replace it. As long as I don't have to do THAT more than a few hundred times I should be OK.

The adapters themselves are cheap and easy to find on eBay, but I have yet to find a short for some decent short RCA patch cables. I might need to check out some of my cable sources vs eBay.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: Josh on June 19, 2019, 1857 UTC
I have no experience using 1/4" or 1/8" plugs, but lots of old ham gear used RCA plugs, I recall them being used to connect external VFOs to transmitters, for example.

Collins did testing on RCA jacks and found them to be low loss at the rf freqs they tested them at. Not very environment proof however.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on June 19, 2019, 1912 UTC
Collins did testing on RCA jacks and found them to be low loss at the rf freqs they tested them at. Not very environment proof however.

It rarely rains inside my shack, so I should be OK  ;D

That reminded me, years ago one place I worked there was an older gentleman in the wire shop, he must have been in his late 60s or even 70s (this was in the late 1980s) who used to work for Collins. He had many stories to tell about Collins in general, and even Arthur Collins himself. He did some of our best wiring work on chassis, as you can probably imagine, from his prior experience.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: ThaDood on June 19, 2019, 1927 UTC
Heck, I had a Realistic DX-40 portable,   http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1978/h131.html     that had a 3/32" ANT connector. It worked, for what it was at the time. I certainly would not TX with a connector like that, even QRP.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 19, 2019, 2002 UTC
3/32" ANT connector

I'm having trouble finding info on this.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: JimIO on June 19, 2019, 2008 UTC
"I'm having trouble finding info on this."

AKA   2.5mm
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 19, 2019, 2017 UTC
You mean the extra-small audio connector!?! Wild.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: NJQA on June 20, 2019, 1122 UTC
Yeah, depending on the connector you can easily start getting loose connections after a few hundred cycles - I did. You can get there very quickly if you switch antennas around a few times a day to check things out.

The number of “mate cycles” a connector is rated can vary wildly.  Some precision connectors are rated for thousands:

https://www.keysight.com/main/editorial.jspx?ckey=632781&id=632781&nid=-11143.0.00&lc=eng&cc=US

Some cheap overseas connectors are seemingly rated for a number less than one.

Most connectors seem to have manufacturer ratings for mate cycles in terms of hundreds of cycles.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that the connector outright fails completely, it means that it doesn’t meet some specification any more (for example, the thickness of the gold plating).   The connector may still be perfectly useful for most applications.

If the connector is abused, all bets are off.  Most RF threaded connectors have torque specs, but you rarely see a torque wrench used.  Some connectors come in 50 ohm and 75 ohm variants.  They look similar, but internal pin diameters are different.  If you mix the two, you may damage one of them.

This article had some good points about connector mate cycles:
https://www.cirris.com/learning-center/product-articles/other-products/227-connector-life-cycles

When you buy hamfest connectors and adapters, who knows what you are getting.  “You pays your money and you takes your chance.”  I try to stay with well known brands like Amphenol, and avoid the ones that look like they have had a rough life.

Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: R4002 on June 20, 2019, 1230 UTC
"I'm having trouble finding info on this."

AKA   2.5mm

Even modern AM/FM/SW portables have 3.5mm audio jacks as their antenna connection.  I know my Grundig G3 uses a 3.5mm jack for the roll-up wire antenna connection, and I believe my Tecsun PL-660 does as well. 

For RX purposes I would feel better using a RCA plug over a 3.5mm plug, but for portables it makes sense to use a smaller size plug for form factor.  Plus, as others have mentioned, there's a huge amount of variability when it comes to the quality of the connectors/sockets themselves. 
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: Kage on June 20, 2019, 1410 UTC
Lots of those older emergency CB radio walkie talkies that were meant to be kept with a road kit used RCA jacks for the magmount antenna and they worked just fine for TX. I suspect because in emergencies they are one of the fastest connectors to plug in and most familiar to ordinary people.
I've also used RCA jacks for <30MHz without problem but wouldn't trust them for anything other than QRP since they can easily be yanked out and would cause a PA transistor to pop.

If you have some of the higher quality A/V RCA cables around and are like me and often split the audio cables from the video and toss the video (yellow) cable to the side often those video cables have better shielding and can be used well into the higher SW frequencies with low power since they are made to carry wideband composite video. Impedance may be unpredictable but at low power it's not much of an issue. I often keep the yellow video RCA cables around for mono only interconnects too for the same reason.

This reminds me that I found 50' of 5 connector A/V RCA cables (red/green/blue left/right) in the trash and should try to push some RF down one to a dummy and see what kind of SWR and power loss they have on 11m since I have RCA to PL259 adapters :P
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 20, 2019, 1627 UTC
Even modern AM/FM/SW portables have 3.5mm audio jacks as their antenna connection. 

Yes, my pl-880 has this as well.  However, my concern is whether they could handle even modest TX powers.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: R4002 on June 20, 2019, 1907 UTC
Probably depends on how you define "modest" - are we talking less than 1 watt QRP or 4 watt carrier CB power levels or QRPP/Part 15 power levels?   If those emergency CB radios mentioned by Kage used RCA jacks then probably.  I remember I used to have a late 70s vintage Radio Shack (Realistic) handheld CB with a massive center telescopic whip antenna and it had connectors on the side for external microphone, speaker, 12VDC power and antenna...and the external antenna connection was a RCA connector.  The handheld CB was wither 2 watts or 4 watts transmit power rated, that's with a fresh set of batteries or an external 12 volt power supply though. 

Did I ever actually connect an external antenna to the handheld CB?  Nope.  But as mentioned by Kage, there were other radios sold with these connectors so they must work to some degree or another.  I imagine that the emergency CBs aren't designed for absolute maximum range but the antennas still need to present a workable impedance and SWR to the transmitter.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on June 21, 2019, 1413 UTC
Probably depends on how you define "modest" - are we talking less than 1 watt QRP or 4 watt carrier CB power levels or QRPP/Part 15 power levels?

In my case, I'm looking at 15 watt PEP SSB at most.

I'm not clear on what the dangers are.  Is it a concern of an arc between conductors at higher voltages?  Impedance problems?  Overheating due to too little conductor for applied wattage?
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: syfr on July 12, 2019, 2326 UTC
Much of the 100W heath gear of the 70's and 80's used RCA jacks. They're fine RF connectors with an excellent impedance match even at the 100W plus power level.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on July 13, 2019, 1220 UTC
I ran the test here the other day on 20 and 40 meters, about 125 watts SSB through some RCA connectors on my antenna patch board. Worked fine.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: Pigmeat on July 13, 2019, 1949 UTC
I used it when I made up patch cords for my vintage Drake receivers from the "Twin Series" of TX/RX's. It's what they were set up to take for RX from the factory. RG-9 is the 75 ohms mini coax that I prefer. A crimp-on RCA male plug and you're rocking with an antenna that matches a dipole at the feed point. It's about as easy as it gets.

I knew a pirate that used either RG-6 or RG-9 feedline for a TX in the power ranges you're talking about with a 1:1 balun for years. He would occasionally add an amp and run roughly 150 watts of AM through the stuff, no problems.

I've used Dollar Store speaker wire for both feedline and the antenna, using a tuner. and had good results. That RF has to go somewhere.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: i_hear_you on July 15, 2019, 1405 UTC
I ran the test here the other day on 20 and 40 meters, about 125 watts SSB through some RCA connectors on my antenna patch board. Worked fine.

For some follow up I used RCA connectors and have been running 100 watts PEP SSB, and 50W/30W FM VHF/UHF as well with no noticeable ill effects.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: Josh on July 16, 2019, 0353 UTC
On speaker wire as transmission line, some is very lossy on hf and above.
Title: Re: Audio jacks/plugs as QRP RF wire quick connects
Post by: Pigmeat on July 16, 2019, 1844 UTC
It is when it gets twisted. That's when it got split and turned into general low profile antenna wire. Those 100 ft. "Dollar Store" rolls of the stuff were much less bulky to carry into the woods than coax. 65'-67' ft. length for the feed, 33-34' for the dipole all for a buck and change.

They lasted about 5-7 tx'es, which was fine for my needs. When I split some of them I'd string them through a hayfield as a BOG which worked great or used them just to experiment with Made a nice MW mag loop out of the stuff about 20 years ago until a late tomcat got tangled up in it.