Topband: Twin Lead (Speaker Wire) Loss?

[Jim Brown]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:42:50 EST, Telegrapher9 at aol.com wrote:

>I would recommend RG-174 coax. It is small, light, and inexpensive.

Yes, I was going to make the same suggestion. Or even an RG58. 
Receive antennas are pretty forgiving about loss and even modest 
impedance mismatch. What you DO want to carry is a selection of 
ferrites to decouple the receive antenna from the coax. Best bet 
would be a bunch of #31 2.4" o.d., 1.4" i.d. toroids, commonly 
called FT-240 in ham lingo. Fair-Rite part number 2631803802.  14 
turns of the coax around one of these cores makes an excellent 
decoupling choke for 160-40 meters. 

BTW -- parallel wire cable (including the glorified zip cord sold as 
speaker wire) is a train wreck for RFI. MANY cases of RFI have been 
solved by replacing zip cord with twisted pair. A twisted pair of 
stranded THHN (house wire) is an excellent loudspeaker cable. 

Jim Brown K9YC