2 Metre band discussion...

If you want to discuss anything about the 2 metre band, or your 2 metre band radio equipment, or your 2 metre band antennas, please post your messages here.
73
Alf (G7VGG)

I think there was a slight lift on 2m today as I heard the GB3VHF beacon for the first time this morning. The Beacon is about 32 miles from my QTH and like all beacons its signal is horizontally polarised so even though I was running vertical polarisation via a Slim Jim I was receiving it at a steady 5x5.

As you are probably all aware I use an Yeasu FT-847. It has four seperate coax sockets on its rear end, three SO239 sockets (for HF/6m/4m and 2m) and one N-type female socket (for 70cms).
I use the same length of 11m of Westflex 103 coax, joined to about 10m of RG213 for both 2m and 70cms to feed my dual band Slim Jim and up till now it has had one of the new, high quality, waterproof, N type-body-like PL259 plugs on the end. I dont yet have a splitter box so I have been simply swapping the coax over from one socket to other whenever I worked 2m or 70cms, with the mating to the 70cms N-Type on the radio being achieved via an N-Type male to SO239 adapter.
I read an artical by another FT-847 owner that mentioned he had replaced the two meter SO239 with an N-Type female. This mod required an N-type chassis socket with an oval flange that takes 2 securing screws, but no matter how hard I searched, up till now I have only seen the square flange versions that need four securing screws. Well Im glad I tried ebay!...Truck King, the famous C.B. radio equipment suppliers, were offering oval flange versions on ebay for just £2.99 plus 90p postage
When the socket arrived I was glad to see that the center connector and rear solder pin was gold plated right through, although the body itself was Nickel plated and not Silver plated.
Swapping it over was simple and it only took about 5-10 minutes to do. As soon as I attached the coax to the new 2m N-type socket via N-Type male to SO239 adapter I noticed a noticable increase in RX'd signal strengths!!! For instance, stations that were giving me S9 before went up to around 9+15 to 9+20!...I was now very glad that I had swapped the 2m socket over to an N-Type, but now I thought if swapping the socket on the radio can make that much improvment what would happen if I replaced the PL259 on the Coax with an N-Type plug?...After fitting the N- plug I could'nt wait to plug it in and try it. To my great supprise the signals that had gone up to around 9+20 were now endstop!!!
I still have two more PL259's inline which join the Westflex 103 to the RG213, via a double female SO239 adapter/"barrel connector" and, now I am even more curious as to what improvement I can gain by swapping these for N-types too!
After this, I now have an extremely low opinion on PL259/SO239 connectors and where possible I am going to try to erradicate them from my shack and replace them with N-Types, and I would advise you all to do the same!