Removing various antennae

[steve.garlick]

Hi all,

I need to take down our radio mast. It carries a bunch of different antennae, like gps, VHF, navtex etc. Some units, like the Furano weather fax seem to have the coax hard wired to the unit. I've dug as deep as my ample girth allows into the bowels of the boat, but can't find any coax connectors.

Can I just cut these cables, then put in a splice when I re-install the radio mast?

Tx

Steve

[Paul Elliott]

Yes, you can cut them. When you are ready to put everything back together, you probably don't want to splice the coaxial cables, but instead install connectors and use couplers to reconnect the ends. This way you can more easily work on the system in the future.

You want to really inspect the cables before reusing them. If they have been exposed to sun or salt water they may be corroded and you would be better off replacing them. In any case, it's not a bad idea to have connectors and service-loops to make future work easier.