Hi Jim, you forgot the straw and camel droppings in the list of materials to
cast a "shiny" PL259. I have a feeling the difficulty soldering is the much
vaunted nickel plating. The MaCom version that Harry does is robust. I spent
about 10 years recently with a PMR firm fitting, amongst other users, Taxis
and farm tractors with PMR. We were forever having trouble with the cheapies
about 6 months after fitting, often sooner in the tractors. When we started
fitting good ones, I can never remember having to replace one. In fact I
used to scrounge the second-hand ones for personal use. We used to buy from
ITT at Harlow now Arrow....or have they been sold again.....or closed

The popularity is purely cost. I remeber getting a lovely Collins coax relay
relay with 2 N-types and a BNC (for the rx) in about 1962. I went to a
little store (the name Able rings a bell....my life) just in the fork of the
Edgeware road and the Harrow Road a few shops down from Smiths. He wanted £6
for N-types then, which I could not afford, but he did me a second hand BNC
for £2 !! I replaced the N bulhead fitting sockets with SO239s and used it
for many years at HF. Good quality UHF connectors were still readily
available on WWII surplus equipment. In those days UHF connectors (haha)
were regarded as showing that it was 'real' radio equipement. I remember
when I bought and built an Heathkit  HW100 kit in 1968 it had an RCA Phono
connector as the aerial socket !! for 100 watts of RF. (replaced with an
SO239) This was a time when most homebrew gear used Belling-Lee TV
connectors...which cost about 1/6d  ...or 7.5p in funny money. The inflow of
the Japanese rigs made the "UHF" connector popular, but CB sealed its fate
with the really tatty connectors and coax to match.

Cheers de Alan G3NYK
[email protected]