Crimp Connectors – Setup from DavisRF

Order arrived (I installed the dies for the picture)

When I pulled the LMR-400 for my Island QTH’s ZeroFive Flagpole vertical antenna, Tom K0TTC brought over his DX Engineering crimp connector setup to put the ends on (UHF connectors).

I rather admired his setup, and when I was ordering cables from DavisRF asked them about crimp connectors, and they said that I could add the tools and connectors to my cable order, no problem.

The crimp dies come separate and are easy to install. I could have bought just the dies, as I have standard sized crimp tools in each QTH’s PowerPole install tool kit, but I elected to get the whole tool to avoid the likelihood of ending up losing something later.

Bought 24 each of N-connector male and UHF-connector male crimp assemblies.

When I have done these in the past, and when K0TTC and I installed my last run, the center pins were also soldered.

Technically the industry makes a distinction between Crimp, Clamp and Solder styles of amateur radio connectors, with Crimp further dividing into soldered-center-pin and crimped-center-pin versions.

“Clamp” refers to a connector which utilizes a threaded sleeve to secure the connector to the cable. The center pin is soldered. “Crimp” refers to a connector for which the body (shell) is crimped onto the cable (with a crimp tool), making shield contact, and the center pin can be either soldered (preferably) or crimped. “Solder” refers to a solder on design, requiring soldering of both the center pin and the body to the cable shield braid.

So again I am doing Crimped soldered-center-pin.

Nothing against DX Engineering, as the DavisRF setup and supplies was about 2/3rd the spend, though I don’t get the swish DX Engineering branding going with pro-level commercial grade kit and supplies.

Links: https://www.davisrf.com/amateur.php

https://www.dxengineering.com/

An example video (there are many): https://youtu.be/yrefqZlIUkA

73

Steve
K9ZW

Printed Flex-6000 Series Manuals

Several new FlexRadio Flex-6000 series owners have emailed me asking about pre-printed manuals.

FlexRadio as a Software Defined Radio outfit sends a CD with new radios (or at least mine came with them) and depends on downloads for updates.

That is great if you are somewhere with good cheap connectivity and if you are like me where a printed manual is helpful, are willing to print out a copy.

Peter WA2CWA at the ManualMan has an arrangement to offer preprinted manuals: ManualMan.com FlexRadio Manuals

Technically the Hardware and Software manuals are different downloads, which ManualMan offers unpunched, pre-punched or comb-bound.

They print the latest public released version, unless you ask them for an older version.

I started using their manuals when my Flex-5000A arrived in 2008 – WHERE IS THE BOOK ON THIS THING? – HIGH QUALITY VINTAGE MANUALS FROM THE MANUALMAN

Of course they offer a lot of other manuals, claiming to have some 15,000+ manuals available!!!

73

Steve
K9ZW

Jeff KE9V issues the full re-release of the Ham Radio Adventure “Cornbread Road”

Today Jeff Davis KE9V released the remaining episodes of Cornbread Road.

Back in 2010 Jeff KE9V posted this teaser for the series:

Deep in the Heartland a small group of ham radio enthusiasts enjoy an idyllic existence of wide open spaces, no antenna restrictions, low-noise levels, simple living, and good fellowship. But things aren’t exactly as they seem. Unexplained lights in the night sky, radio signals masked from the ether, strange late night visitors to this small farming community…

I listened to Cornbread Road when Jeff rolled it out https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/cornbread-road-jeff-ke9vs-work-a-different-kind-of-ham-radio-podcast/ , and wrote  https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/cornbread-road-a-ke9v-audio-amateur-radio-novel-fully-on-line/ when the original 13 episodes were all put online.

I caught the re-release on Jeff KE9V’s Twitter feed – https://twitter.com/ke9v/

Jeff KE9V promises a full re-release of the Ham Radio Adventure “Cornbread Road”

Latest Update  see: https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2020/08/26/jeff-ke9v-issues-the-full-re-release-of-the-ham-radio-adventure-cornbread-road/

Jeff Davis KE9V recently tweeted “Cornbread Road Episode 1 – for old times sake, do you remember?” and posted the first episode at:

https://ke9v.net/media/cbr_ep1.mp3

[Edit] When this article came live, Jeff KE9V had also posted episode #2 (linked below).

Jeff KE9V commented “I’ll be posting all 13 episodes again spread over several weeks. These were originally recorded starting June 2010 so it’s been a decade.”  Back in 2010 Jeff KE9V posted this teaser for the series:

Deep in the Heartland a small group of ham radio enthusiasts enjoy an idyllic existence of wide open spaces, no antenna restrictions, low-noise levels, simple living, and good fellowship. But things aren’t exactly as they seem. Unexplained lights in the night sky, radio signals masked from the ether, strange late night visitors to this small farming community…

An Excellent FT8 Guide by ZL2IFB

Gary Hinson G4IFB/ZL2IFB runs a pretty awesome website https://www.g4ifb.com/ and has done an excellent job of producing an FT8 Guide available as a PDF.

https://www.g4ifb.com/FT8_Hinson_tips_for_HF_DXers.pdf

I’m partway through rereading his guide and would recommend it to both new FT8 users and the experienced operator.

An Experience of FlexRadio’s Remote Access Helping a Corrupted DAX Issue

Having several Windows PCs, and Apple Macs/iPhones/iPads all in use with four FlexRadio Flex-6000’s in various locations, AND participating the Alpha Testing Program with lots of extra test versions of software, I have messed up a few installations with DAX naming corruption issues. Usually I’ve been able to use the FRS published procedures to sort things out.

But then came one PC, a HP fanless i5 used at my Washington Island QTH, that caught the DAX-Blues really hard.

The usual techniques didn’t sort out this mess – and I was at the verge of making it worse!