[TowerTalk] one last question

[Jim Lux]

At 01:51 PM 6/21/2006, ersmar at comcast.net wrote:
>Eugene:
>
>      Welcome to the most interesting hobby (IMHO) in the world.  You'll 
> enjoy Ham Radio even more once you jump in to things like DX'ing, 
> contesting, antenna construction, VHF weak signal work, etc, etc., etc.
>
>      Forget about copperweld.  That stuff is too stiff to work with and 
> the coppe cladding will disappear in a few years, unless you've spent a 
> bunch of $ for really good stuff.  I speak from experience on both of 
> these issues.

OTOH, Copperweld(tm) and its ilk are used for countless telephone, 
telegraph, and AC power wires with lives up in the many decade area.  As 
Gene mentions, there may be variations in quality among manufacturer and 
model, but I would expect any reasonable grade to last forever, at least as 
far as the cladding goes. (Just for example, the thinnest coating grade 
(21% conductivity)for CopperWeld is about 0.0025 inch on AWG 12... I'm not 
sure how they size it, because AWG12 21% is a different OD than AWG12 40%)

Given the recent skyrocketing copper prices, copper clad steel might be 
very attractive. Copper is a smaller part of the overall manufacturing cost 
for copperclad steel, so it should be less affected by the copper 
price.Skin depth at RF is shallow enough that the RF performance will be as 
good as solid copper (if not better, because for the same $$, you can 
afford a larger diameter wire).


There's also an interesting CopperClad Aluminum wire available.  (from the 
Copperweld company, as well).  There are 21%, 30%, and 40% CCS (steel core) 
and 10% and 15% CCA (Al core) flavors

See also:
http://www.copperweld.com/cwwire/cladstel.html