[TowerTalk] Copper Vs AL Was UV and WX deterioration of THHN insulation, and effects

[jimlux]

On 12/30/16 6:58 AM, Kim Elmore wrote:
> I tried aluminum radials once, at my folk's house (my dad was a ham). He had an 18AVQ trapped vertical and I decided it would do better work radials. This was maybe 40 y ago. Somewhere, I'd come across a big coil of Al wire, maybe 8 ga, pretty cheap. I dutifully laid out as much as I could wherever I could fit it. Lots of work. It seemed to help a bit but lasted only a few years because it corroded to nothing!
>

this is the challenge with aluminum, buried in the ground - if the soil 
chemistry is wrong, it disappears quickly.