[Amps] Silver plating

[Alex]

Well, yes, it's been done. Even the VRC-24 radio of WWII vintage had the
tank coil plated in gold (30 to 70 MHz operation): it was very FB from the
operational point of view. 
Actually the surface conductivity of gold is less than bare copper but it
stays clean and shiny.
One thing about silver that was not mentioned: it tarnishes just like bare
copper does, even though there is a tarnish retarding surface treatment, but
silver oxide remains highly conductive, the only oxide to do so (all others
are insulators). This is the reason contactors have solid silver contacts.
Alex	4Z5KS

-----Original Message-----
From: amps-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:amps-bounces at contesting.com] On
Behalf Of ToddRoberts2001 at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 11:32 AM
To: amps at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] Silver plating

Hi All,
Very interesting info on silver plating an HF tank coil,  thanks. From all 
I 
have read it sounds like silver plating a tank coil is nice for  aesthetic 
reasons
but does little if any to improve performance on HF, depending on how
thick the plating layer actually is.
 
I'm thinking from a practical standpoint if you want to avoid tarnish
wouldn't a better choice be gold plating? The gold plate is  an extremely
thin layer so probably very little change to the skin effect, but the gold  
would
look very pretty and effectively stop any tarnish from forming? Even 
silver eventually tarnishes and requires cleaning and polishing from
time to time.
 
I have looked at some online gold platers and I see that people have  all
kinds of things gold plated, from car keys to almost anything you
can imagine. Anything conductive can be gold plated and a copper
coil would be ideal. The price for gold plating depends a lot on how
much refinishing the plater needs to do. If the item is already clean
smooth copper and you don't need a mirror finish the price should 
be very reasonable.
 
73 Todd WD4NGG
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