Topband: Stainless Steel for coil taps

[Tim Shoppa]

Roger, I have gone through the school of hard knocks on alligator clips,
especially as my home station went from 100W to making major efforts at
legal limit RTTY contests.

While the BU-27C end serrations are great for 10-14AWG copper wire, I would
like to add that the BU-27C also has a lipped stretch that is good for 1/4"
copper tubing.

I think copper clips do help dissipate any heat generated at the interface
point. So it's not just electrical conductivity that helps power handling,
it's also the thermal conductivity.

I will also say that I am mystified at those here who think that steel has
some incompatibility with RF circuits. For example all of my old-school EF
Johnson/etc tuning capacitors use steel rods/threaded-rod as the backbones,
and most all ring lugs are plated steel.

Tim N3QE

On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 10:32 AM Roger Parsons via Topband <
topband at contesting.com> wrote:

> Tim N3QE wrote:
>
> "I would recommend something different for coil tapping for a 10AWG coil: I
> am a big fan of the Mueller BU-27C copper clip, rated for 40A DC. If you
> are going onto thick copper tubing, Mueller the BU-27CGW (the "geophone
> clip") works well."
>
> I really wish I had known about these years ago!
>
> 73 Roger
> VE3ZI
>
>
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