Mailbag - October 2022

 My maibag blog post with some of the items i received in October 2022 (including a disclosure of what i want to do with it in the future and some results of a LoRa antenna i received).

For the cables i did buy 3 sets of these cables with banana-plugs.  After receiving i noticed that i did not ordered exactly what i wanted as the banana-plugs don't have an option to attach another cable (e.g. in parallel) as they don't have a female connection hole. However this would only be a nice to have as is don't often need this. The wires are flexible and look good.

To extend the cables above i also ordered some female to female banana connectors. Both of the above mentioned products (cables and conenctors) are ordered as my long term plan is to have a better experimenting area. I want to make there some fixed color coded connections with banana chassis plugs (that i already ordered some time ago) between some fixed locations using the same color coding. So this i can use for wiring the first and last meters.

An additional memory card was also needed

As i had some troubles with my SMA to IPX connection cables when using my self soldered IPX connectors i needed to order some new additional cables.

Also some more SMA connectors for RF experiments. If is a big bag as, after some disappointing experiments, i decided that it was probably better to use SMA connectors than the small IPX connectors so i need a lager stock of this connectors.

Also for RF experiments 2 different sized longer coax wires (10m and 5 m) with SMA M to SMA F  connectors. After some other experiments i expect i will use it for outdoor antenna experiments.

To protect the SMA connectors i also ordered this protection caps

As my last test with my VNA showed that my Lora antenna showed was not for 868 MHz i ordered a new one. Below text from the advertisement:   Item specifics Brand Name: QKZ Origin: Mainland China Gain(dB): 12dBi Model Number: Aerial Antenna Certification: None Product Description   Feature 868MHz LoRa LoRaWAN Helium 12dBi RP SMA Male Aerial Antenna. High Efficiency Far Transmission High Strength reinforced Plastic High Density/Light Weight Suitable for Miner (Recommended by Helium): Bobcat/Nebra (Indoor/Outdoor)/RAK Wireless/RAK2 Wireless/Syncrobit/Cal-Chip/LongAP/Sensecap/Kerlink   Specification Connector: SMA-Male Polarization: Vertical Polarization Gain: 12dBi V.S.W.R: <=1.5 Impedance: 50 ohm Material: ABS Operation Temperature: -40~+85 Celsius Length:37.5cm Relative Humidity: Up to 95 My photo of the antenna I did a quick first test with my Lite VNA and this are the first results (not full optimal, however better than i had before) The best SWR seems to be around 800MHz with a value around 1.5 At the 868 MHz LoRa frequency the SWR is around 2.3 (On Aliexpress the seller mentioned V.S.W.R: <=1.5 ) When the antenna is somewhere else positioned with a decent ground perhaps my measured  values can change a little.

I ordered also some other SMA connectors. This ones are round chassis types and fit in a hole.