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SMA to BNC

TAPR, Tucson Amateur Packet Radio, has a few mailing lists there, some for the discussion of APRS and things associated with it. One of those lists is the "hot technology" list.

The Hot Technology list is for discussion of new technology pertaining to APRS; it is generally dominated by topics on the Kenwood TH-D7A (and subsequent versions), although there are other things that pop up from time to time.

At any rate, there has been a persistent theme on that list regarding the SMA antenna connector on the TH-D7: it seems to be weak, mechanically.

For those of us who are not yet blessed with a mobile radio, often the HT does double duty. Moving it from the car to the belt, or the briefcase, or anywhere else, for that matter, entails a lot of connect-disconnect cycles on the antenna connector. Not only does this wear it out, but one can put a lot of mechanical stress on that connector, if one isn't careful. In the case of a number of people on the HT list, this sometimes leads to the connector breaking.

Inspired by this, I endeavored to come up with a way to use a BNC connector instead of the SMA. Below are links to other pages on my attempts to do so.

Prototype 1

Prototype 2