Category: Amateur Radio

Hams being innovative come up with a myriad of cheap alternatives for wire for antennas. One of those alternatives is common 0.91mm steel MIG wire.

Steel MIG wire is often coated with copper and is claimed by some online experts to “work real good”, particularly as a stealth antenna.

But is it the makings of a reasonably efficient antenna?

This article applies the model developed at A model of current distribution in copper clad steel conductors at RF to estimate the effective RF resistance of the wire at 3.5MHz.

Copper coated round steel conductor (MIG wire) – 0.91mm single core

In fact copper is an undesirable and restricted contaminant of steel welding wire, high grade MIG wire is not copper coated.

Copper content is held to less than 0.05% in the core, and less than 0.05% in the coating… which on my calcs says the coating of common 0.91mm MIG wire is less than 0.125µm…. basically it is a small diameter wire with low conductivity and high permeability. Continue reading 80m half wave dipole made from 0.91mm steel MIG wire

Hams being innovative come up with a myriad of cheap alternatives for wire for antennas. One of those alternatives is galvanised steel fence wire.

A small roll of galvanised tie wire can be purchased from Bunnings hardware for about $10 for 95m… so at $0.10/m it looks like an economical solution.

But is it the makings of a reasonably efficient antenna?

This article applies the model developed at A model of current distribution in copper clad steel conductors at RF to estimate the effective RF resistance of the wire at 3.5MHz.

Galvanised round steel conductor – 1.5mm single core

A sample of new unweathered wire was measured to determine the approximate zinc coating depth, it was 15µm. Note that zinc is a sacrificial coating and it will erode through life, so this study is an optimistic one of wire when new. Continue reading 80m half wave dipole made from galvanised fence wire

Having just written again on skin effect and copper clad steel (CCS) conductors on HF, and the potential for less than copper performance, it was interesting to note a thread on QRZ where the OP asked for advice on the issue with budget CCS RG-11.

Two late posts as I write this were:

There really is no real issue with skin effect on HF bands with copper clad materials.

and…

At 1.8 MHz, the skin depth in copper is 0.654 micro-meters (.0000654 mm), so the copper cladding on the center conductor of most RG-11 type coaxial cables is more than sufficient for any of our current bands.

The specific advice above looks interesting, convincing even… but thankfully, the skin depth in copper is nowhere near either of the figures he gave. Continue reading Skin depth in copper at 1.8MHz according to QRZ

In developing and implementing A model of current distribution in copper clad steel conductors at RF reconciliation against some other published data was important.

(Stewart 1999) published a set of measurements of the popular Wireman windowed ladder line products. His measurements were in the range 50-150MHz. They form the basis for most calculators on quantitative analyses at HF, despite the fact that it is a dangerous extrapolation for CCS construction.

Nevertheless, the directly stated measurements at 50MHz are a useful calibration point for reconciliation.

Above is Table 1 from Stewart, it sets out measurements of four Wireman m.products and a plain copper line.

The table below compares Stewart’s measurements with the CCS model and with TLDetails results (where available). Continue reading Reconciliation of Duffy CCS model with N7WS ladder line measurements

A model for current distribution in a conductor is that for a homogenous conducting half space with surface current parallel to the interface. Current density at depth d is given by the expression \(J=J_0 \cdot e^{(-(1+j) \cdot \frac dδ)}\) where δ is the skin depth (\(δ=(ω \cdot µ \cdot σ)^{0.5}\), σ is the conductivity). This is a model for a plane wave in an infinite block of conductor, so there are some issues caused by curvature of the wire surface, more so towards the centre.

Copper round conductor – 1.024mm (#18) single core

Fig 1 is a plot of the current distribution in a 1mm dia (#18) round copper conductor at 1.8MHz as implied by the model. Note that while the magnitude of current decays exponentially with depth, there is an imaginary component that hints a curl of the E and H fields within the conductor. Continue reading A model of current distribution in copper clad steel conductors at RF