On 17 Jan 2025, at 4:19?am, Mike Colyar <mike@...> wrote:

In a better world . . .?

?

I’m wintering in Baja far from my scopes and have run out of new places to explore on my dirt bike thus I’m reduced to browsing through the 80,000+ messages on here. Impressive!

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The posts are impossible to categorize easily but a few patterns do catch the eye.

Way up near the top of the list are cable and connector issues. Time and again I read the plaintive cry. “I’m sure it’s not a connection problem. I’ve sprayed all of them and examined every plug and socket.” And time after time, if the petitioner ever bothers to get back to us, it turns out to be, Voila!, a bum RJ plug/socket with an occasional coaxial power plug thrown in for giggles. Time after time.

Lesson learned (perhaps)? “Look under the street light for your contact lens. The light is better there”. Or maybe an equally appropriate bit of advice. “When you hear hoof beats, think horses. Not zebras.”

I started out this grumble saying, “In a better world . . .” we would not have gotten locked in to these wretched RJ and coaxial connections. In the case of the coaxial power plugs, there was really no economical alternative. That has changed. I’ll get back to that.

In the case of the RJ stuff, there are still strong forces sucking at us. The cables are dirt assed cheap and blindingly fast to make up. Never mind that they are horridly susceptible to corrosion and comically weak. and both designs are quick and easy to mass install on printed circuit boards. And at the rock bottom prices that our mounts are being offered, a few cents matter.

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I can hear a bunch of you tuning up out there now about prices. Again and again I read posts crying out that one thing and another should be better built for what we pay for it!

You might just keep in mind that many of these businesses (I’m thinking just now of Losmandy and SiTech) are essentially hobby operations gotten wildly out of control. They employ fewer employees than a tire store and can’t pay them that much more. Many are sidelines of far more lucrative businesses. They will never, ever get back the investment in either money or time that has gone into these products.

I know whereof I speak. I have a general purpose shop wherein I take a customers notion and crank out a very limited quantity of scientific instruments. All the way from foundry to crude and embarrassing efforts at programming with a machine shop sandwiched in between somewhere.

I hold one of these mount or drive system parts in my hand and marvel. I can see making this stuff for these prices if the quantities were reasonable. Like thousands at a time. The computer in your car as an example. But that first car computer probably cost a million dollars to design, build and then re-engineer for mass production. Leave out the mass production and you find our nitch market plagued by our oldest businesses disappearing due to the owner moving into a rest home. And not a fancy one at that!

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Since I’ve already exceeded any polite limit on message length, I’ll stuff in here a plug for a far better power connector. There have totally replaced all other designs in most applications. Probably the first new thing under the sun in a coons age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole

Available from damed near everyone.

These have saved me more call backs and complaints than any other component other than a threat with a baseball bat. they are immune to any ‘normal’ abuse’ like rain and filth. When assembled in the agreed upon arrangement of positive and negative leads, they are impossible to get backward. There is no exposed contact to short out against metal things.

in the case of a beast like one of our observatories I use slightly different sizes to avoid cross connecting various voltages. This is covered in the WiKi article and the company and vendor information.

I have used these in pretty much all sizes. On the bottom end, as a way to organize the umpteen different little black boxes I use for astronomy and ham radio, all the way up to high current applications like the battery packs to start fuel dragsters and unlimited hydroplanes. Neither of which qualify as a benign environment!

They can be experimented with using a simple soldering iron but I find that reliability goes up and general hassle goes down with the recommended crimp tool.

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I wish there was an equivalent replacement for those stinking RJ connectors. In my limited production designs I default to Amphenol twist lock units. The least expensive plastic body offerings have never failed me except when exposed to a nitromethane flame or battery acid. Seldom seen in our observatories one hopes. They go together easily either by soldering or with a crimp tool. You can stay with simple pin arrangements or go completely nuts (Already there, I know.).

O.K. I’ll go quietly. No force needed.

Mike