[TowerTalk] Aluminium and copper

[Donald Chester]

>For the most part, I found that stranded wire was the easiest to work with 
>for radials.  (But needing so much wire, I
>became not very picky and had a bit of trouble with insulation that was 
>'bonded' to the wire (looks a lot like the
>telephone cable lead from the pole to the house).  I had two large spools 
>of that stuff.

I wouldn't recommend stranded wire for radials, unless it is covered with 
plastic insulation.  Stranded wire will deteriorate in the soil at a much 
faster rate than will solid wire.

I once installed a radial system using #10 solid copperweld, that was 
salvaged from the old open-wire telegraph  lines than used to run alongside 
railways.  The open-wire telephone wires of the day were made of steel  
wire, but due to the corrosive effect of the coal smoke from steam 
locomotives, they used copperweld alongside the tracks because it had a 
longer life expectancy in that environment.

I dug the slits for the wire with a spade, and anchored one end of the wire 
to the  ground before attempting to push it into the slit.  I went back and 
stomped the trench with the buried wire with my heel, and that seemed to 
hold the copperweld in the ground until the earth solidified around it.

Over a decade later, I unearthed some of those copperweld radials and sure 
enough, the wire sprang back into the original  size coil once all the 
tension on it was released.  The copper jacket, although well corroded at 
the surface, was otherwise intact, retaining nearly 100% of its original 
thickness.  Our soil here is neutral to slightly alkaline.

Don k4kyv

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