Aluminum clad steel wire vs stranded copper wire for antenna, which is better?

[4L4AGU]

Yes, it will be free hanging along the whole run. As I already mentioned, I've emailed "wireman" several times, to get shipping/etc information. They refused to reply, so I'll not be dealing with them.

[AD7N]

Yes, it will be free hanging along the whole run. As I already mentioned, I've emailed "wireman" several times, to get shipping/etc information. They refused to reply, so I'll not be dealing with them.

And I forgot to fully read your first post! (doh)

They're not the only suppliers of this kind of wire. There are several sellers of "#13 Variflex Insulated" wire, which is what you're looking for. It's a 13-gauge, 19-strand insulated copper-clad steel wire (UV and acid rain resistant)
Source 1 (called "POLYS-13" wire): http://www.davisrf.com/aerial.php
Source 2:http://www.radioworks.com/cwire.html

This stuff is about as flexible, rugged and electrically conductive as you'll find.

Since you're going all 260ish feet without extra support- you're really going to want to go all out on this one. A rugged antenna will take care of you!

[WA7PRC]

Source 1 (called "POLYS-13" wire): http://www.davisrf.com/aerial.php
Source 2:http://www.radioworks.com/cwire.html

This stuff is about as flexible, rugged and electrically conductive as you'll find.

+1 for Davis RF. Excellent selection, reasonable pricing, and nice folks, too. I use their FlexWeave wire and Daburn porcelain compression ("egg" insulators) on my 40m dipole and 80m cage inverted vee.

[4L4AGU]

Comment from VK1OD:



Lets look at the suggestion of #13 19strand CCS.

Diameter 1.83mm, strand diameter= 370um.

Skin depth in copper at 160m is 50um. For copper like performance, the copper cladding needs to be at least three skin depths (150um) in thickness.

If these strands are the common 30% IACS copper, they probably have a copper thickness of just 40um, way less than the necessary 150um.

The effective RF resistance is probably much less than an equivalent copper conductor, and that really matters at 160m because of the length of the antenna.

[WA7PRC]

In my 80m cage inv vee, I used four runs of #14 168-strand copper Flex-Weave wire from Davis RF. I was told it's hard-drawn. It's broad as a barn door and strong too. They also stock "highly conductive" BCCS (bare copper-covered steel) wire.

[N0AZZ]

I use #14 and 12 Flex-weave for several of my antennas the longest run of 14 is 175' unsupported and using a weight and pulley on the ends with just enough weight to keep it somewhat taunt but not stretched. I do have a 270' run of #12 fed with ladder line which I don't like but had to to reduce weight but it still came down because of very high winds one day 70+ mph.

[KM1H]

Ive been using #14 stranded copper clad for several years on 160 but as an inverted vee but it gets severe wind plus icing since its on a 180' tower on an exposed hilltop. The ropes that support the ends are another 150-200'.

While RG-6 has maybe .1dB/100' loss on 160 due to the thin copper Ive not heard that about antenna wire and I will have to wait until next winter to see if I can melt ice.

Carl

[NW2K]

The RG6 that I have has an 18 AWG copper clad steel (CCS) center conductor. It is 21% CCS, which means that the nominal thickness of copper is about 6.5%. For 18 AWG, the copper layer is 34 microns thick over low carbon steel. The skin depth of Cu at 1.8 MHz is 49 microns. Skin depth is defined when the current density falls to 1/e (i.e. 37%). For my 18 AWG RG6 with 34 microns of copper cladding, that means that a majority of the current density resides in low carbon steel, not copper.

At 160m, my guess is that the extra loss due to the thin copper in my RG6 is more in the range of 1db-2db per 100'. I should measure it.

For reference, if the center conductor of an RG6 cable were made from 40% CCS, the copper cladding layer would be approximately 90 microns thick. That's about two skin depths at 160m and I would guess that the extra loss due to thin copper would be in the range like Carl suggests.

[KM1H]

The 1988 chart I have from CommScope shows about .34dB/100' total loss at 2 MHz for RG-6. It also shows the effect of the cladding as the slope is decidely different compared to all copper.

Carl