[TowerTalk] Field telephone wire for radials

[N1BUG]

Yes, after pulling the two wires apart you will have two nice coils of 
wire with an attitude! I have used thousands of feet of WD1A for 
reversible Beverages, control cables and even feed line for LF/MF 
receiving antennas. I had a one mile spool that looked and supposedly 
was new old stock. It is/was not flat parallel conductors, but actually 
twisted pair with a low twist rate. That can make separating the two 
wires interesting if you are doing a long piece.

The other caution I would add is seal the ends! If water gets into that 
stuff it can be a disaster. The steel strands rust and then the rust 
damages the tinned copper strands. Before long you have a high 
resistance point in the wire where all of the strands are broken. I 
spent way too many hours troubleshooting stuff before finally figuring 
that one out. I'm not sure how far water will propagate inside the 
insulation but I would definitely want to seal the end where a radial is 
connected at the base of the vertical. I would probably seal both ends 
for peace of mind.

73,
Paul


On 11/2/2020 9:08 AM, Roger Parsons via TowerTalk wrote:
> Just one point about WD1/WD1A cable. I find it great for radials, but
> splitting it can be harder than it seems. It lays beautifully flat as
> a pair, but each individual wire seems to have a tight spiral on it,
> and it's really hard to use. Of course, I may be doing something
> wrong, but that's my experience.