I was crimping coax connectors wrong for two years and only found out because of a weird static issue

I was troubleshooting a persistent static problem on a Garmin G500 TXi install last month. The signal was clean on the bench but garbage in the plane. My mentor, who was helping, asked to see my crimp tool. He pointed out I was using the wrong die set for the specific RG-400 cable we had. I had been using the die marked for 'coax' from the kit, but it was slightly off for that cable's shield. We swapped to the correct die, re-did the connector, and the static was gone. I had probably made a hundred connectors that way. Has anyone else had a crimp tool bite them like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

williammiller15d ago

Read a forum post once where a guy kept having VSWR spikes on his ham radio setup. Turned out his crimper had worn out just enough to not fully compress the center pin. It was making intermittent contact. He replaced the tool and the problem vanished. Those small tolerances really matter. A bad crimp might look fine but act up under vibration or temperature change.

jade_singh10d ago

Had a similar headache with my mobile rig. The SWR would jump around like crazy on bumpy roads. Spent weeks checking antennas and mounts. Finally borrowed a buddy's crimper and redid all the coax ends. Problem was gone. My old tool had a tiny bit of play I never noticed.

parkerp8015d ago

Yeah, @williammiller, makes you wonder how many "weird" RF issues are just a tired crimper or a cheap connector, right?