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Where to Buy Ham Radio Parts in Australia: What to Check Before You Order

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  If you’re working out where to buy ham radio parts in Australia, there are three sensible routes: a specialist Australian dealer, an overseas seller, or the second-hand market. All can be right. All can also bite you. The trick is knowing whether you’re buying a part, a delay, or a problem with postage attached. The three ways amateurs really buy gear An Australian specialist dealer usually has a narrower range than the giant overseas catalogues, and sometimes the item is on backorder. But when the listing says it is on the shelf, you can ask whether that means their shelf. That matters when Friday is your only chance to finish an antenna for a weekend field day. A real local warranty and usable return address are worth something. Overseas ordering is terrific for obscure connectors and replacement boards that aren’t imported here. It is also where people get seduced by the first number on screen. Add freight, GST, exchange conversion and a possible return trip, and the bargain...
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Coax for Amateur Radio: RG58, RG213, LL240 and LL400 Compared

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  Most people don't think about their feedline until the signal report comes back weaker than it should. A while back, a fairly typical cable question came up: a customer needed coax for an antenna installation, knew the length of the run, and had already decided on RG58 because it was cheaper and easier to handle. The run wasn't particularly short, though. It was heading from the radio room towards an antenna well away from the shack. On the reel, RG58 looked like coax. It had the right connectors available, it was 50 ohm, it was flexible and it was considerably cheaper than the heavier options. So what's the problem? Nothing, if the job is right for RG58. That's the bit that catches people. RG58 isn't a bad cable. RG213 isn't automatically better for every installation. LL240 and LL400 aren't magic signal boosters either. They're different feedline choices, and the sensible choice depends on what you're trying to do with them. The mistake is treati...
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RF and Coaxial Connectors Explained: PL-259, N-Type, BNC and SMA

  A bloke once walked in with a perfectly good dual-band radio, a new length of coax and three adaptors screwed together like a little brass sculpture. None of it was doing quite what he expected. The antenna had an N-type socket, the radio wanted a PL-259, and somewhere along the way he'd added a BNC adaptor because it looked close enough in the online photo. It fitted. Sort of. The receive side sounded weak, his SWR reading wandered, and touching the adaptor stack changed the result. Naturally, the radio got blamed first. Most people don't think much about coaxial connectors until the signal drops out. They're small, inexpensive compared with the radio, and often bought at the end of a project when patience and budget are both running low. Yet that little joint between the radio antenna cable and the equipment has to preserve the shield, maintain solid centre-conductor contact and carry RF without introducing an ugly impedance change. It also has to survive movement, vib...
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