<NeroTHz>
95% of the coax I use is Huber+Suhner sucoflex, mostly suco102 and suco 103 iirc
<NeroTHz>
¨dB/feet¨ what kind of nonsensical units are these ;p
<NeroTHz>
seems like typical RG405-ish performance, just only rated to 12 GHz but that is probably just the connectors they use or something
<NeroTHz>
you do needa watch out with semi-rigid, they have very poor bending lifetimes
<NeroTHz>
they can give you very good price/performance, but that performance can break down fast
<azonenberg>
Yeah I try not to use these too often
<azonenberg>
I actually VNA'd every single one of the cables in my inventory just to check them out
<azonenberg>
and they all look fine right now
<azonenberg>
But i expect those to wear out after a while
<azonenberg>
These days the FL086-24SM+ cables are my main workhorse
<NeroTHz>
in general, SMA also just has a short lifetime, which is why I kinda wanna switch to 3.5 for th ehome lab but 3.5 is just fking expensive
<azonenberg>
SMA is also more robust than 3.5 against accidental damage though, right?
<azonenberg>
Which is why i'm using SMA as my default and only plan to move to 3.5mm for higher freq purposes
<NeroTHz>
yes, but people like to over-do the fragility
<NeroTHz>
if you have good connector care and connector ettiquete, you can use them all the time without issues
<NeroTHz>
and ofcourse, the super-high-quality connectors on say a VNA cal kit are extremely fragile because they have those slotless center female contacts
<NeroTHz>
that is what I really love about 2.4 and 1.85 - while in some sense more fragile than 3.5 because of the smaller center pin dimensions, the core design of the connector is waaaay more robust because the outer housing mates up a lot firmer before the center contacts can touch
<azonenberg>
yeah, and i can tooootally afford to put 2.4mm connectors on everything in my lab
<azonenberg>
Lol
<NeroTHz>
yeah, I know, that is the annoyign part
<azonenberg>
I already have multiple kUSD of SMA cabling here. Afraid to think what it would cost if it was 2.4
<NeroTHz>
I kinda wish they would make an updated variant of 3.5 that fixes these issues
<azonenberg>
Or even SMA?
<azonenberg>
Just a slightly different ref plane position would fix it
<NeroTHz>
yeah
<azonenberg>
isn't SMA basically just a stronger 3.5mm because the female pin is buried in dielectric?
<azonenberg>
trading RF performance off against mechanical durability?
<NeroTHz>
yeah, in a sense it should be
<NeroTHz>
but the way the center contacts are made kinda negate that
<NeroTHz>
the center contacts on SMA is usually very thin metal, that relies on the dielectric to keep good contact
<NeroTHz>
and that dielectric quickly wears out, resulting in severely decreased contact pressure, and eventually even partial to complete failure to contact
<azonenberg>
interesting
<azonenberg>
So the female side wears out? not the male?
<NeroTHz>
wheras 3.5 and 2.92 have center contacts that are designed so the ´deformation´ of the female center contacts is purely in the elastic region, so they always flex back
<NeroTHz>
azonenberg, yes, usually it is the female
<monochroma>
wave guide or bust
<NeroTHz>
monochroma, untill you need to go from waveguide to PCB :p
<monochroma>
you don't put waveguide transition antennas on your PCB and directly attach? :P
<NeroTHz>
I have in the past but it´s a pain
<NeroTHz>
metal waveguides at least
<NeroTHz>
dielectric waveguides are arguably waaay easier to interface with
<NeroTHz>
just plop down a bog-standard vivaldi, tweak, done
<NeroTHz>
I´m looking at doing some metal-waveguide-to-PCB transitions right now and I am not enjoying it
<azonenberg>
isn't it basically just a little metal pin sticking out into a hole in the pcb?
<azonenberg>
thats what the ones i've looked at have seemed like
<azonenberg>
But i've never tried doing it myself
<NeroTHz>
depends. At lower frequencies, you can often have magnetic probes, which are pretty easy and wideband to do
<NeroTHz>
but indeed, at higher frequencies you usually use like a ´monopole´ feed
<azonenberg>
Yeah i'm thinking like the satellite LNA on wikipedia in the article on microstrip filters
<NeroTHz>
but then getting that wideband can be challenging
<NeroTHz>
azonenberg, yeah, looking at that picture now, that is one way of doing it
<azonenberg>
But i've never actually worked with waveguide myself
<azonenberg>
Waveguides for the freqs I work at would be pretty absurdly large
<NeroTHz>
but now remember that at my bands, the inside of the waveguide is like 1.6x0.8 mm :p
<azonenberg>
meanwhile at my bands you could probably have a small child crawl down one :p
<NeroTHz>
so yeah, the transition I am making doesn´t have a probe into a waveguide, it has a pad the waveguide screws on, and then I have a probe embedded into the pcb and tweak the thickness of the stackup such that I´m actually making a back-short
<NeroTHz>
miek, lol, interesting, but to some extent just seems making the problem more complex than it needs to be
<miek>
going a bit too far with the rf plumbing joke i guess :)
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<azonenberg>
welp, refactoring is almost done with the E's alphabetically
<azonenberg>
lol
<azonenberg>
still quiiiite a few more classes to do