I believe that the accepted figure for the loss of one PL-259 connector is about 0.01 dB at 50 MHz, and this is a very conservative (pessimistic) estimate. You will find measurements on the web that vary from 0 dB to 1 dB for a single PL-259. The (female) SO-239 is a bit worse, but if you use 0.01 dB for each connector regardless of type, you will have a pretty good, conservative estimate of the connector loss in your system at HF.
The typical ham has about 20 coaxial connectors in the path between transmitter and antenna, representing a total loss of about 0.2 dB (conservative) representing about 4.5 W loss for every 100 W of transmitter power. To me this seems like it's in the (very conservative) ballpark. The loss increases at higher frequencies, as you can imagine, but it's also even lower at lower frequencies. Al W6LX ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
