Roy Smith wrote:

My club wants to equip all our planes with jacks so people can plug
their handhelds into an external antenna in case the panel radios fail.

In the past, what we've done is had a length of coax run into the
cockpit with a BNC connector crimped onto it. The problem there is it
tends to get kicked around, the connector gets smashed, etc. When you
need it, it's not usable.

One alternative I've thought of is to have the antenna cable run to a
BNC jack on the panel. The problem with that idea is then you need a
length of cable to go from the jack to your radio, which will in turn
get lost, smashed up, etc.

Has anybody come up with a good solution to this problem?

Have each member carry and be responsible for their own cable, and
maybe they'll take better care of them 8-)

FWIW, I have used a lot of "crimp on" BNC connectors on Ethernet
cables, and if moved or handled a lot, the shield braid usually
breaks right at the connector. Adding a piece of heat shrink
tubing as a strain relief improves their longevity quite a bit.