Topband: Silver Plated Conductor

[K4SAV]

GEORGE WALLNER wrote:

>Would silver plating the conductors make a practical 
>difference? There is no significant heating of the 
>conductors now with full legal power.
>
>  
>

Before you consider silver plating a coil, here is something you should 
know.  At 2 MHz the RF skin depth in silver is 0.00178 inches.  You need 
about three skin depths of plating, that's about 0.0053 inches.  If you 
just walk into a plating shop and say, here silver plate this, you will 
get about 0.00002 inches.  "Highly polish-able" grade silver plating is 
0.001 inches and costly. You need 5 times that.  It's going to be 
expensive.  Most ham coils used at low frequencies are silver plated 
just for appearance purposes.

Jerry, K4SAV