Radio cable. Any ideas?

johnalison

johnalison

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My Skanti radio has given good service for 19 seasons but the cable has started to shed its outer covering. According to Mantsbrite there are no longer any spares and it can't be repaired. The radio still works, and the red tape is where the first bit frayed. I suppose that I will have to get a new radio, which is irritating. I see that a whole Skanti is being sold on eBay for £149, which is not worthwhile and it may suffer the same fate anyway. If anyone has any idea how to bodge it up for the next year or two without looking too messy, I am open to any suggestions.

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Not uncommon problem to present itself. Old Raymarine and Navico equipment also used that rather thin and rigid tinsel cable surrounded by a very thin rubber sleeve to connect mike to radio.
Unless you can discover someone with far too much time on their hands splice a new curly cable on to the "D" connector and then get them to older to the PCB inside mic, its a case of plenty of insulating tape for the duration.A radio amateur might be the answer, otherwise its half an hour professional labour and VAT.
Worth commenting that one company which produces a wide range of transceivers for all markets ,not just marine, curiously avoided this glaring mistake and remained with heavy duty rubberised cords.A company called Icom.. :)
 
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maby said:
If you are comfortable removing and replacing the plug, then heat shrink sleeving will do a decent job - something like this : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BLACK-HE...c527b5f22:m:m3GDrY0Pa4544pYtPVWjGFA:rk:6:pf:0 - play a hot air gun over it and it will shrink by about 50% of its starting diameter and produce a good and long lived finish.
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Thanks all and sundry. I like the idea of heat-shrink better than having to get soldering done, something I'm not good at.

When I bought the Skanti there are only three DSC options: the Skanti/Sailor, the Navico which I was going to steer clear of since my old Navico stuff fell to bits, and the Icom. At the time, the Icom came as two boxes, and operation was more complex, with the need to acknowledge incoming calls manually, otherwise I might have gone for it.
 
You need to get the heat-shrink up to about 130C in order to shrink it - more than most hair-dryers can manage - look for a hot-air paint stripper and run it on its coolest setting.
 
How many cores is it?
4 core can be robbed from an old phone. Or even a new plain-old-telephone.
 
MikeCC said:
For ongoing bodge, self amalgamating tape will be more robust in support and weather resistance than insulating tape.
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My thoughts too. The initial 'repair' was done in haste and to provide some mechanical support to stop it kinking. Thinking about heat-shrink tubing, I would have to detach the cable first in order to get the tubing over the connector, which would bring me back to the business of re-soldering everything. I think it is going to be a bodge-up with s-amalgamating tape in black done at my leisure during the winter, and see how things go. A new radio would probably mean getting something fancy with inside and out handsets to join with my e7 rather than a basic one.
 
johnalison said:
.........A new radio would probably mean getting something fancy with inside and out handsets to join with my e7 rather than a basic one.
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Not an easy choice. There’s a lot to commend the simplicity of channel select, volume and squelch!

I guess that mine qualifies as “something fancy”. It has a wireless handheld linked to the base station located down below. This is a good features and obviates the broken curly wire problem. The down side is that reading glasses are required (for most of us) in the cockpit. It can become quite tedious pressing key combinations and scrolling through menus to find the myriad of information that they can convey.
 
Personally I wouldn't bother trying to stick the decaying cable back together. They've very conveniently used a D-sub connector for the radio end, which is easy to buy and solves the usual problem of tracking down an obscure plug that's not available in field-installable versions. The handset end might be soldered to the PCB but I think is much more likely fitted via a small connector in one of several commonly-used types. These again can be bought cheaply online; posting a picture here might help some knowledgeable person identify what you should be searching for. They generally have individual crimp-on terminals which are supposed to be applied by a dedicated crimper (we have a rack at work of all the specialist types) but for a one-off DIY job a pair of jeweller's pliers will generally suffice - it's a bodge, but far less of a bodge than just wrapping tape around a disintegrating cable.

With these two connectors you can make up a brand new cable assembly in whatever length (within reason) is convenient, and not have to worry about it falling apart for another 20 years or so.

Pete
 
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