[TowerTalk] Fwd: Using aluminum wire [or aluminum clad wire]

[Pete Smith]

You can even get flooded wirenuts at Home Depot.

73, Pete N4ZR

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On 12/30/2010 3:29 PM, Hans Hammarquist wrote:
>   It is the square, hard pin that is the secret behind the good and reliable connection of wire wrapped connections. You will not even get a close result if you wrap a wire around a round pin. (Been there, done that, and that was tin plated Cu wire on tin plated Cu pins.) You have the same mechanism with wire nuts. Inside the nut is a spiral spring made of square wire. The sharp corners will press themselves into the softer metal in the conductor and form a "gas tight" connection.
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> I wonder if we can use wire nuts to make the connections to Al wires in antennas. Simple and cheap. Any comments?
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> Hans - N2JFS
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tod - ID<tod at k0to.us>
> To: towertalk at contesting.com
> Sent: Thu, Dec 30, 2010 11:40 am
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Using  aluminum wire [or aluminum clad wire]
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> One does not need to solder wire to assure good conductivity between two
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> pieces that are 'connected' together. Western Electric ran experiments in
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> the 'middle ages' of technology that showed wrapped joints would actually
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> have better conductivity than soldered joints. The result was that the
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> telephone switching centers had wire wrapped connections rather than
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> soldered connections. The technique had cost and simplicity advantages as
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> well. Many of our initial commercial computers had wire-wrapped backplanes.
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> The Western Electric experiments used copper, not aluminum and the pins that
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> were wrapped with wire were square in cross section, not round.
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