The QST article was woefully short on technical detail, in my opinion, and I
couldn’t believe it made the cover. There is little technology being addressed
in the magazine.
Sad state of affairs.
Ed McCann
AG6CX
Sent from my iPhone
> On Feb 24, 2020, at 5:46 AM, Rob Atkinson <ranchorobbo@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have a few problems with this wire. My experience with aluminum is
> that it is not worth the trouble integrating it into the rest of the
> antenna system when it comes to bonding it to other metals. I
> appreciate the light weight and lower cost but aluminum has another
> undesirable property: It cold flows so clamps on it eventually come
> loose and then you have resistance and heat. This is why aluminum
> house wire which was tried in the 1960s came to a quick end--too many
> cold flows, heat and fires. I hope it isn't coming back for that
> purpose.
>
> I have my 200 amp service drop to my home using aluminum. I don't
> like it but I can't make the power company use copper. Every few
> years I check the lugs on the main breaker to make sure they are still
> tight. This is one area where an IR camera would come in handy. It
> WILL cold flow eventually and you'll know it when your lights flicker
> or dim briefly when a big load like A/C comes on.
>
> I was dismayed to see that QST ran an article by some sort of RF
> expert on how to construct open wire feedline using aluminum AWG 8 or
> maybe it was 6, stranded wire. Ridiculous overkill for ham power, and
> he spliced line sections together using what appeared to be steel
> clamps. Those clamps will lose their grip in a few years and he'll
> have problems, besides the use of steel for RF. None of this came up
> in the article. Then there was the line Z due to the spacing and
> diameter of AWG 8 cable but that's outside the focus here.
>
> 73
> Rob
> K5UJ
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