Totally agree, no cheap connectors.Get the right cable and avoid adapters. 
Might consider crimping once I get the right tool.
As of the quality of the RG58ā¦ have many versionsā¦ even one with red coatingā¦ will have to explore.
Thank you!
73s Ingo
Have you a link to the exact ones please ? Or maybe CPC do them too ?
Thanks very much !
Indeed that looks like good quality!
Thanks Mark!
73s
Ingo
Pay the money once, buy decent BNC, SMA or N types and then you can adopt the term
āfit and forgetā
rather than
āfit and regretā
I have a different philosophy: For portable operations such as SOTA, I use inexpensive cable and connectors which I mount mechanically stable (protected with shrink tube) and then measure with my NanoVNA and RigExpert analyzer to make sure there is no really bad connector or cable section.
In my connector box, I have a selection of bulk chinese connectors (SMA, BNC, PL,N), and a few connectors of the same type from sources with known quality, which I only use where specifically required. Mounting the chinese connectors, I had 1 out of 20 or so that was not good, I then cut it off and mounted a new one which was OK.
Disclaimer: When operating portable, I use mostly HF, rarely 50 or 144 MHz, nothing where a extra 0.5 dB would make a difference to me. Others might weigh ācheap replacement when lost or brokenā vs. āleast possible attenuationā differently. However, āfit and forgetā in SOTA, or generally portable operations, could always be challenged by multiple mishaps that may occur during an activation.
Opposite to that, I took care of using the best quality cables and connectors I could get in the 13cm UL path of my QO-100 ground station, for obvious reasons.
73 Jens HB9EKO
I gave up with N types for SOTA on account of the weight. I also limit the use of SMA as cold hands and fat fingers (not as though Iāve got fat fingers 
) makes for misthreading, so they are confined to connections to my handheld transceiver. What always surprises me is that no-one uses TNCsā¦ for the uninitiated they are basically threaded BNCs. Maybe that is down to a lack of suitable sources.
That gets a from me. The lower the loss, the lower the noise figure of the receive set up. Most summits have a low noise environment so why not take advantage of it?
At below 5C my RF400UF with SMA is a nightmare to connect. Even RG400 + SMA is bad. Itās why I do almost no 13cms in the Winter.
You just donāt see many of them surplus and so donāt build up junk stock. Iāve been collecting quality junk for 40 years. I have stopped now as I have enough! I bought a bag of BNC bits at a junk sale, it contained 25 chassis mount socket, 30 panel mount sockets and uncounted amounts of plug bodies, teflon pieces, cable clamps etc. Along with 40 years of skip diving I have enough solder BNC parts. Iāve only bought BNC crimp recently and I think I bought some BNC <> RG213 30 years back.
In the TNC world I have a TNC to BNC which goes on the Marconi TF2015 sig gen frequency meter output to the meter. Sadly when you take the blanking plug from the TNC socket on the TF2015, the leakage swamps the attenuated outputā¦ it doesnāt get used much. I have a few old ETACS car mobile phone units from the late 80s that run about 10W on 920MHz. These may have been used for clandestine talkback operation 30+ years ago 
We had a PSU for a big valved PA that used a TNCs for the HT feed. Wouldnāt want to confuse 2.5kV with small signal path so TNC was HV safe and couldnāt be confused with BNC or N signal connections.
So thatās a total of 4 devices in 32year ham career that used TNC. Shame, itās a good connector.
CPC has quite a range of TNC connectors so they arenāt hard to get.
Indeed frozen hands are an issue.
Remember not beeing able to dismantle the HF-P1 because of the cold wind. This was in the first half of January in northern Black Forrest. A bit over 1000m.
Stayed too long
73s
Ingo
In fact, not only crimped connectors are at the end of the day more reliable, they are field replaceable.
And no problems with thermal damage during soldering - applies to both cable and connector.
Could also have been August 2023 in the Alps 
.
