On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:25:16 -0600, "RB"
wrote:

Putting a "shortie" marine VHF ant on the boat. This ant is the one with a
loading/matching coil at the bottom of the whip.

The coax comes down from the center of the coil. The base of the coil has a
threaded female fitting same thread/dia as the male counterpart of the lay
down mount. The lay down mount has holes in it to accommodate the coax in
its journey to the radio.

Question is how the heck do I screw the ant onto the mount without the coax
cord getting twisted to the point of damage?

_very_ carefully!

Is the idea that the coax will
roll (twist) enough as I'm screwing the ant onto the base that it won't
damage something?

I know some of you have been there/done this, so tell me the way out of the
problem.


In theory, the hole in the mount should be large enough that the coax
will easily rotate in the mount (but not relative to the antenna) as
you screw the mount into the base of the antenna.

Unfortunately, theories such as this are often wrong. My
brother-in-law had a shop install a new antenna and mount of this type
on his Whaler - they managed to twist the coax enough that the center
conductor and shield shorted, but the cable remained attached to the
antenna, so the fault wasn't obvious. I found the problem after he
complained of poor reception - he could only receive if the connector
on the radio was left loose, so the shield didn't make contact.


--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
new newsgroup users info : http://vancouver-webpages.com/nnq
GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter
Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca