[TowerTalk] Topband: Silver Plated Conductor

[Roger (K8RI)]

> ...I wound a 160m monoband PI-NET coil from TWT #10 wire, close spaced 
> over
> 4"PVC. A pair of 813s and a couple of air capacitors with this home brew 
> low
> tech coil puts out 1100 watts into the bird.
>
> I wonder if anyone could hear the difference between the # 10 copper wire 
> or
> appropriately silver coated coil stock?

Man, many, many...(Well you get the idea) years ago (at least 30 to 40), in 
another time, place, and life I worked for a company that used a lot of 
induction heating equipment. The little stuff was about 6KW out and we had 
generators up to several hundred thousand watts output. Although some of the 
coils were silver plated in general we just used plain old copper tubing 
from the hardware store for our coils. Frequencies covered a wide range.

I used to wind the little water cooled, "pancake" coils out of Copper tubing 
by hand. The larger stuff was usually done on a lathe but the form was 
turned manually (for safety).  Some of these coils were silver plated but 
most were not. Even the silver plating was not done for adding efficency 
when running hundreds of thousands of watts at those frequencies. There were 
other reasons for the plating.  So the direct answer to the question is an 
unqualified, No.

Which brings to mind...The safety issue gets raised on here about climbing, 
but silver plating has some interesting hazards. There are two typical types 
of electroplating in general use. One uses a Silver Nitrate and dilute HNO3 
(not suitable for decorative plating). The other uses Silver Cyanide and 
IIRC Potassium Cyanide.   Just dipping the Copper into the Silver Cyanide 
solution would give a "flash plating" that could be polished to a nice 
shine. Mixing the two procedures could be a bit hazardous to your health.

Roger (K8RI)