At the January 2022 meeting of the Cascades Amateur Radio Society, Wesley Cardone (N8QM) gave a presentation on the DX Engineering DXE-UT-KIT4 cable prep kit.
Wes could not say how it typically is for the rest of the members in attendance at the January meeting but for his case, he only finds himself doing coax connecting work maybe once or twice a year. That’s not very often. But when it does happen, it is very nice to have a cable prep kit handy to make the job look truly professional after all is said and done.
The only other question left is if $260 is worth paying for that convenience.
Wes walked through the process of wire preparation for PL-259 attachment. That step-by-step process is shown below.
For this example, Wes brought along a length of RG-8X coax cable.
The first step is to strip off the outer insulation. This is done with the die shown at the right which has two holes, one on each side. The larger of the two holes will be used for this first step to remove the outer insulation.
The die is slipped onto the coax running it into the large hole and then the die is twisted stripping off the outer insulation.
Having removed the outer insulation we then fold back the shield to fully expose the inner insulation and its conductor.
This facilitates the next step which is to remove the inner insulation to expose the conductor. For this we flip the green die over to show the smaller hole. This is slipped over the coax and another twisting process begins.
This second twisting process cuts off the inner insulation with minimal effect to the inner core wire.
Often times it is difficult to hold onto the coax as the die is turned such that the die is able to cut through the insulation. A coax holding device is in the kit to help with this (not shown).
And thus the inner insulation is stripped clean exposing the inner core wire.
Can you guess what the next step is?
The final step is to place the PL-259 connector over the fully prepped coax cable.
Does anybody have a soldering pencil handy?
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