12-05-2016, 02:41 AM
axle2152 Wrote:Well after 2 days of trying to do all sorts of improvements with my ham raido stuff I did finally get everything done. Attempted to put up 30 feet of pipe to serve as a pole to put my antennas one, for several reasons decided not to go through with it and returned the pipe and so on... However, I did get the LMR-400 coax put in and it made a huge difference... The RG-8X is too lossy on VHF (and even worse on UHF). I run 75 watts and maybe 30 watts was making it to the antenna...now with the LMR-400 in addition to shortening the length by going out the window probably closer to 68-70...
Anyway really had a terrible time getting the connectors on (PL-259). Me having not done a whole lot of it didn't really know the trick to it...so because I did it wrong the first few attempts the antenna analyzer said the SWR was like 6:1 which is bad (anything higher than 2:1 is not good, really should be better than 1.5:1)... I finally decided to google around because I thought there must be a special connector for this LMR cable as it is way bigger in diameter than the RG-8X and the connectors were just barely getting in...
So I figured out the trick and with not the best tools got it all sorted out.
So yeah...geeking out big time this weekend lol
NEEERRRRD!!!!!
j/k j/k lol, glad you got it sorted out though

I was beginning to wonder if you were gonna let a wire get the best of you

