R018 Testing Wire Dipole Materials for HF

[@rickprice407]

Nice test and good to know. I will say that in my almost 60 years as a ham, I've loaded up a 12 ga copper wire dipole, my metal rain gutters, a 2 mile barbed wire strand and many other crazy antennas and made good contacts on all of them. Although there are some differences, paying attention to getting it as close as possible to resonance at the desired impedance is a big factor. My dipole had 2, 75' legs (length of the 12/3 scrap piece) and a diy balun at the middle. Up about 75' between 2 pine trees, it was awesome. But at 75' it should be. Unexpectedly, my metal rain gutters also did great and I worked with them for almost a year and got a lot of good DX on them.

[@David__]

Thanks for all the hard work in doing this test. Lots of other useful tips here also. It would be great if you could share the results (resonance, dBm, SWR, $/m, frequency, etc.. ) in a spreadsheet. If there was a method to calibrate the conditions, thinking it could be a useful resource that others could also contribute to doing a similar test across other wires for comparison.

[@ralphwatkins9170]

You forgot the disclaimer on this video. No Charlie-Oscar-Whiskys were harmed during these tests. Great, well done video.

[@rasa2745]

They were my neighbor's cows in the video and yes, they are still there. Mine had already graduated to hamburger heaven. Thanks for the comments

[@DutchCleveland]

So other than the tiny mig wire. No significant difference. That is awesome. There is a QST article from like 1968 where some old man was yelling at all the people that make this hobby difficult when it doesnt have to be. " We used to use our boxsprings as antennas. Dont overthink things. just get on the air" (That was the paraphrased quote as I remember it) Looks like I dont have to fret about pure copper stranded and can use cheaper and probably stronger aluminum wire. PERFECT!

[@jasontwynn7356]

Thank you guys very much . You answered a lot of questions for me about wire type . I have a lot of wire for power lines from the power poles to houses . Lots of copper wire and aluminum wire, all good size wires. So now I'm going to make a few antennas for a lower band like the CB 27 mhz and see how it goes , now that I know they all work aroma the same.

[@gunterkonig959]

Thank You for the work you done. The results is very clear: coper and aluminium, not coated and with higher diameter are the best,because the skin effekt is the reason! You may calkulate it and I think the result is near to Your messurment. Good work, OM!

[@HaskellMoore]

Well done! Thanks for the work that it took to do this.

[@n4lq]

How is 4 DB "negatable? Looks very obvious that the bare copper and 3mm aluminum win this one by a lot. Remember, 3 DB is 1/2 your power!

[@thequarantinecatholic]

You have such a great sense of humor! What an enjoyable video!

[@PulsechainProfits]

Awesome. This was the wire science ive been looking for.

[@SpinStar1956]

Appreciate the work and analysis. I’ve used larger diameter MIG-wire in locations where I both left it and had the potential for theft. I did not notice any significant difference from the normal copper wire. I think this has been overblown with the exception of very small steel wires! 73… 😊

[@TheREALJosephTurner]

I don't have any of the test equipment you used here, so I can't verify data- BUT- I have had great luck building dipoles out of 75-ohm TV coax, using only the braid as elements (not hooking the center conductor to anything). I'm talking about just the dipole elements- the dipole is still fed with 50-ohm RG-8X coax. I gave it a try one day, since TV coax is practically free in my area, with everyone ditching cable TV in favor of streaming. People will usually give me the coax for free in exchange for me removing it from their houses. You can't solder the braids, so you have to make sure your crimp connections are good. Plus, with the way the coax is constructed, you don't have to worry much about stretching on longer antennas, such as 40-160 meters. This is best used for standard dipoles- using it for fan dipoles can get heavy in a hurry.

[@DXCommanderHQ]

Very fine. I'll take the extra 2-4dB please :)

[@rilosvideos877]

Interesting test and results! So its not so much about the wire material, but about the wire length and matching properties of the antenna. I would guess copper tubing would work the best of all, generally?

[@christopheriles1469]

Excellent video! Your time and effort was really appreciated. Thank you. Chris, G0VOE, Somerset, England.

[@survivalcomms]

Excellent test. Thanks for sharing !

[@okhamradio]

Thanks for sharing this information. This experiment is really interesting

[@ronrico2620]

A sherpshank, fancy knot. I uaually do a truckers hitch but that was smooth

[@jordanclarke2996]

Brillant video, loads of helpful information in there. Especially for me about to build a hf antenna

[@skinnyflea2628]

Wow this was phenomenally done! Very scientific imho. This was very helpful information! Thanks!! 73.

[@nplds6551]

Great job! Many thanks for this detailed experiment!

[@blackrun14b]

Nice test! Thank you for that. But keep in mind: Within the little antennaheight the directional lobe and its elevation extremely varies with the antenna position. a few inches difference in the feedpointheight may result in a little degrees higher or lower radiationpattern. You have to make sure every antenna over the whole length including its centerpoint is placed in exact the same place over ground. so you need some height measurements or a guidepost in the middle. you also did the experiment with extremely low power. the effect of the resistance will be much higher if you deal with the high currents, so more power. nevertheless you see a only slight effect due to the different resistance. for me more important is the toughness of the wire according to the environmental stress. i prefere cold-drawn, bright gray isolated, stranded and tinned coppercable. the tin is a good anti corrosion protection and cold drawn AWGs can handle very strong tensions. for very long loops, long wires or high power i use 2.5m² (about 14 AWG). The bright grey insulation makes it nearly invisible. For holiday it can be everithing else.

[@danmarkiewicz524]

A very nice and impressive video. Great job, thank you.

[@raulcrudele1]

Nice job! 👍

[@yt5bos]

Great test guys, you saved many of us the hassle of testing on our own. Was the MIG welding wire with flux core?

[@agalah408]

No. Solid core.

[@johnwest7993]

Two dB may not seem like much on the receive end, but it's equivalent to the difference between about a 100 W transmitter and a 160 Watt one. It makes it clear just how unimportant power is compared to everything else.

[@gbriceno]

How di you calculate the offset distances that you trimmed off to make each antenna resonant at the same frequency?

[@ianjackson9493]

A fair question, I will try to answer. Lets take the first wire. 3600mm long and resonant on 19.56 MHz. We want to know how long to make it for 21.2 MHz I used the formula: (1/(1/3600 x 21.2) x 19.56) which equalled 3321mm for resonance on 21.2 MHz. This worked spot on. I had to do all the 1/ steps because the wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency, but apart from that it is a basic cross-multiply solution. I hope that this makes sense. Cheers.

[@larrypicard5969]

Thanks very much for all of this effort. Three issues come to mind that may not have been addressed. The first is the power handling capabilities of each of these wire types. The second is the effect on performance of the conductivity of the wires themselves. Keeping in mind that you did your testing on 15 meters, where each leg of a dipole will be only a few meters, there will be little DC resistance from feedpoint to the ends of each leg. Different considerations might apply if you were building dipoles for 40, 80 or even 160 meters. Finally there is the question of the effective surface area of each wire type. At the frequencies tested, the skin effect would limit the current flows to a fraction of a millimeter on each strand of wire. I would wonder once again if the effects of a single strand vs. multiple strands might be more pronounced with longer i.e. lower frequency, dipoles.

[@rasa2745]

Tnx for comments. To make a meaningful comparison of the test on a lower frequency, It would have taken a much bigger effort, taller poles, more distance to the receive station and a lot more time. I was running out of all of these resources, so we did as much as we could. Still, I suspect that the results would be mostly proportional to our findings on the 15M band. It would be great to see if someone else would pick up and take this theme further.

[@SteveWrightNZ]

@@rasa2745 I poke 1KW into galv wire antennas on 160/80/40 and they go like a shower of shit.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

@@rasa2745 I see no reason to believe the relative performance of these wires matters as to frequency. Where it MIGHT matter slightly is the plated wires; higher frequency has skin effect measured in microns. Lower frequencies might reach into the underlying metal.

[@kenchilton]

FB with the tests. A couple other parameters would be interesting, just for completeness: Which had the lowest SWR? How wide will the antenna tune and stay under 2:1? How does each work in the receive direction? As a guess, I think diameter rules the day on SWR, and the copper and aluminum probably does a bit better on receive than the steel types, but again not enough to make the decision. The physical strength is the biggest for me, so having a material that does not stretch and will handle a windstorm is indeed worth a dB. These factors point to coated steel wire, though some innovation with steel and copper together might be interesting.

[@rasa2745]

Fair comment. We did collect a lot of data, but there was also a risk of getting bogged down with too much numeric info in the video. Most of the dipoles under test dipped at between 1.6 and 1.7 to 1 VSWR. The stainless wire rose to 1.9, as did the pvc coated garden wire. The worst was the MIG wire at 2.4:1 I started the analysis without preference or preconception of what I would find. My takeaway from the exercise was that differences are small. Having a tough antenna nice and high, oriented in the correct direction is the most important consideration by a big margin.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

4 db difference may not see like much, but 3 db is a doubling of power.

[@eknaap8800]

Proper job! 👌

[@glyn1]

Great video you went to BOY SCOUTS sheep shank knot

[@robertvandersanden]

Interesting experiment. You had to cut each wire to a different length to get resonance at the same frequency. Did you find any correlation between the length of each wire and the signal strength? A longer wire may radiate just a tad better?

[@МихаилВасильев-в9д]

A longer antenna will resonate at lower frequency, which will actually make it work worse at the initial one.

[@JohnWallace74]

Thanks for this video. I have always wondered about this very same subject. 73.

[@kenmartin1211]

Have you ever worked with Beryllium Wire for Dipole antennas? It's extremely strong even at small diameters // Gauges . I built two 10 meter Dipoles using it in # 22 Gauge. Both are resonant from 28.250 to 28. 550 Mighty wide... Low SWR as well... Think 1.5 is the highest and I have put 100 Watts through it without a problem. I worked with a few agencies that used it from 80 m to even VHF.... In fact it works very well for Unattended Ground Sensor, Omni Directional Antennas 138 to 153 Mhz In smaller cuts it stands like piano Wire and is difficult to detect.. Thank You for the Interesting content KC3ZDW 73

[@needhelp2453]

Thank you that was very interesting!

[@RogierYou]

I found that once an antenna is up for a while the performance appears to decrease a bit. Perhaps the corrosion of the bare metal? Planning on (industrial) gold or palladium plating of steel wire. Not for a golden signal but to avoid corridor.

[@thevintageaudiolife]

Thank you for this, I'm about to use 17 gauge fence galvanized solid wire. but only for RX not TX and for shortwave, 30-60mhz, i should be A-OK!

[@SteveWrightNZ]

Great job debunking all sorts of wire antenna myths. I've made antennas from 2mm galv fencing wire for years and I love the stuff! $70 for 660 meters of wire makes for a very interesting weekend of antenna making - that's an awful lot of antennas, and they're cheap enough to throw away if they don't work, or give them away if they do. I also tested fibreglass electric fence tape, but it QSY'ed like a crazy man from dry to wet, and also it caught fire and burned very brightly with any serious amount of horsepower into it. Lets hope your tests get more people cutting wire to resonance!

[@agalah408]

That's a really good observation. I had wondered about electric fence tape for RF. It is stretchy stuff. I'm sure you are right about it being awful for dipoles.

[@stevethefishingsanta7771]

What about using 1/2 in. Copper pipe cut to resonance? Would the larger diameter help or just broaden the bandwidth.

[@thelydiaspringexperiment6437]

im liking the plastic coated steel washing line. super cheap and strong

[@paullalli7774]

The wire should be conductive with fairly low resistance. It should be strong enough to support it's own weight and the feedline, maybe. After that, pink insulation makes electrons move faster...

[@chrissmith7655]

Hi, many thanks. Use stainless wire here as the tree rats, squirrels, like to chew through copper for some reason. Good results with it, not very much difference from copper.

[@geirha75]

Would there be greater differences measuring reception in near field vs far field with different antenna materials?

[@ON8EI]

Great video, very interesting. I like my British Army field telephone D10. I wonder would a Double Bazooka be any different? Thanks again. de ON8EI John.

[@glennstevenson6242]

Excellent thank you!

[@izzzzzz6]

It would have been nice to see this conducted over a larger distance like 20 miles for example. Barbed wire results? Is it top secret or something? Would have been good to see silver wire, and different coatings. Mig wire goes rusty very quickly, the copper coating is very thin.

[@rfmonkey4942]

local content great work fellas regards from vk3,

[@the_mad_swimbaiter455]

Any chance yall can drop a link to the article?

[@tlebryk]

Does wire thickness result in lower and wider SWR? And by how much measured with an analyzer??

[@researchcapt]

I think the cows moving around changed the dB. :)

[@bendunselman]

And knowledge and prejudice by the receiving operator of the type antenna connected accounts for another dB while averaging the varying receive strength by eye.

[@josemariatrueba4568]

3 or 4dB extra are a lot once you have reached maximum legal power with an expensive external RF amplifier. 3dB over a 1500 watt amplifier are equivalent to 3000w, and 4dB equal to 3768w. Reversing the calculations is also interesting because 4dB below 100 watts is like our 100w HF radio were capable of 39.8 watts only. A 5 watt QRP station using batteries would be as strong as 12.6 watts if we could access to those extra 4dB, in other words we could transmit during 2.5 hours with a 5w TX power for every hour at 12.6w TX power, assuming the same efficiency for the transmitters.

[@any1alive]

tbh, with these tests, id love to see how the weldign wire works if it was twisted, or stranded,

[@brotheradam]

I would want to see the band width differences for all ten

[@paullalli7774]

Until the diameter is very, very large (eg: cage dipole) it makes insignificant difference in bandwidth.

[@4KSolutionsLLC-yw2ry]

Well done lads! 73 KO4KHB

[@DK5ONV]

Amazing 💯👌

[@gusmahendra5493]

So the Lower the RX dbm the better .. is it right ?. All your testing look very close .. what happen if you multi band .. can be too resistive?

[@thomasmaughan4798]

These were negative dbm so yes, less negative is good. 4 db may not seem like a lot but 3 db is a doubling of power!

[@thomasmaughan4798]

Resistance is bad. Transmitter power converted to heat rather than radiated signal. Keep in mind there's a difference between resistance (measured with an ohmmeter) and impedance (which is what is measured with the NanoVNA). For dissipation purposes I suppose these are similar but the antenna "resistance" seen by a NanoVNA includes radiated power, that does not come back, so is imputed as resistance when really it isn't. Iron and steel have more resistance than copper; so you cannot get the same performance with steel. However, the skin effect is measured in microns so a very thin cladding of copper makes a big difference.

[@reedreamer9518]

Does anyone have an opinion about copper clad aluminum for ground radials?

[@alext9675]

How much freq moved isolated vs. isolation stripped for the same wire?

[@agalah408]

Good question Alex. It was quite a lot really. Same wire plastic removed gave a 700KHz shift in resonance. Surprised me!

[@Real_Berserker]

In Russian: Попробуйте провести тест только на одну передачу: Сделайте,пожалуйста,антенну,внутри которой будет спираль,которая должна нагревать антенну,как обычно делают катоды радиоламп косвенного накала. В чём смысл: Электроны постоянно теряют свою скорость в холодном окружающем пространстве,но эти же электроны резко увеличивают свою скорость в горячем пространстве,поэтому электроны легко могут стать античастицами,которые летают во много раз больше,чем скорость света 300 000 км/секунда. Все радиоволны состоят из одних электронов.Поэтому,когда во время передачи вы разогреете электрическим током вашу передающую антенну,то даже при очень маленькой мощности вашего передатчика вас очень хорошо будут слышать на сверх-далеком расстоянии.Потому что разогретые(горячие)электроны или радиоволны имеют очень высокую скорость,поэтому успевают распространяться очень далеко. Но это работает только для передающей антенны и вообще не может работать на принимающую антенну. Поэтому очень хорошо таким способом делать передающие антенны вещательных радиостанций,телевизионных передатчиков,для передатчиков связи с космическими спутниками и так далее;в свою очередь космические спутники должны иметь такие же передающие антенны,которые изнутри(внутри решёток антенн)разогревают спирали этих антенн,как это делают катоды вакуумных ламп.

[@AlexejSvirid]

Вас никто не "подогрел"? Радиоволны это не электроны, и все остальное тоже написано в школьшом курсе физики.

[@Real_Berserker]

@@AlexejSvirid Вы плохо изучали физику.Вся физика,изучаемая в высших учебных заведениях и в академиях,фундаментирована,то есть основана на физике средней школы.Без знания физики за среднюю школу невозможно понять процессы,происходящие в ядерной и квантовой физике.Именно одни электроны являются радиоволнами.А сами электроны и античастицы создаются из одних тепловых волн.Когда античастицы теряют свою скорость,то они становятся электронами.Каждый электрон - это одновременно самая маленькая частица,которая существует в мире,но в тоже время,это одновременно и волна,имеющая длину от нескольких микронов до нескольких сотен миллиардов километров. Вы бы лучше,прежде,чем лезть со своей демагогией идиотизма,изучали бы математику,физику и химию.

[@AlexejSvirid]

Материалы, из которых делают антенны, (медь, алюминий и др) склонны повышать свое активное сопротивление при повышении их температуры. Это ведет к росту потерь в проводнике, в том числе том, из которого сделана антенна. Это значит, что при повышении температуры антена работает хуже... Да, враньё про деда Мороза и Санту не доводит людей до добра.

[@Real_Berserker]

@@AlexejSvirid Здравствуйте, В любом населённом пункте есть гробовщики,а значит,есть и мастера,которые делают из ГРАНИТА (самый прочный по выносливости сверхвысокой температуры материал!)памятники.Попросите этих мастеров сделать вам из гранита ТИГЕЛЬ,в котором вы можете без проблем выплавлять ИНДУКЦИОННЫМ ТОКОМ любые металлы и сплавы.Попробуйте выплавить сплав из меди и серебра:86% по весу меди доводите до температуры КИПЕНИЯ(не плавления!!!),а затем в эту кипящую массу меди опускаете оставшиеся 14% по весу серебро.В итоге,когда всё остынет,у вас должен получиться жаропрочный сплав с очень хорошей проводимостью,из которого у вас получится очень хорошая антенна. У меня под рукой нет таблицы Менделеева,поэтому я не помню,что вперёд доводить до кипения:14% серебра или 86% меди. Удачи!

[@Real_Berserker]

@@AlexejSvirid Повышают сопротивление при повышении температуры только металлы,но не сплавы. Тугоплавкие металлы при соединении с металлами высокой проводимости не увеличивают своё сопротивление,когда становятся сплавами.

[@garylanders1470]

I'd like to see the test done with a more appropriate balun.

[@agalah408]

All tests were done with the same balun, which makes the balun differences transparent. Besides, what's 'more appropriate'?

[@Kangsteri]

Why not litz wire or silver? And why not different wire thickness?

[@la7dfa]

It was their experiment and scope. I wish they had tried some stainless steel, but it is probably a tad worse than galvanized. I am using 4mm stainless guy wires for my verticals, because I live in an island location. But I am considering using some copper wires with the steel as support due to losses.

[@rcapper1]

It would be interesting to know what happens when you push a kilowatt through them.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

:It would be interesting to know what happens when you push a kilowatt through them." I expect the 0.9 mm welding wire would probably heat up a bit at the feed point.

[@RedNeckSurgeyTech]

Any wire you have.

[@rasa2745]

If I had to sum up the results in just four words, they would be the ones that I would use. :)

[@Marcelofriend]

nice!

[@wallstreettrader1]

Could you please make a video showing slowly and close-up how you secured those guy wires to the ground stakes? That is very rare and hard to find information! Thank you so much!!! 73! Erik, NO8Z

[@ianjackson9493]

Hi Erik. You are the first to ask that question! It was essentially a 'truckie's' knot where you can tie down loads super tight without any extra fittings like ratchet tie downs. I have been doing it for years to tie down loads on my car trailer. It even works with slippery nylon rope as seen in this video. If it is coarse cotton/hemp rope, a single loop is fine, with slippery rope, the double loops are better. When finished, you just give it a shake and the knots fall away to straight rope. Great for this sort of work where I can tweak the tension of each leg in a very controlled way until the pole is vertical. There are plenty of tutorials around about this, but here is a good one: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnOqkn6apt-ljLM

[@kitesurf58phil]

Thanks for reminding me how to make a truckies knot. My first 80m band dipole was made from GPO drop wire, which is copper coated steel with a thick durable plastic insulator. I've spent a fortune on antenna wire over the last 32 years, the most expensive being the green military spec Kevlar cored wire. I'm back to using equipment wire. Thanks for the video and article.

[@leos9865]

Thank you

[@swedesspeedshop2518]

You got a bad rod knock in that engine should have that checked out

[@ianjackson9493]

It has a diesel engine and it always sounds like that, although a year after the clip was made, it holed a piston while towing a small caravan (trailer) across the Nulabor plain. A mongrel of a spot. One road. The nearest town behind was 450km away. The nearest town in front was 700km away. No trees or shrubs higher than my knee to the horizon. Not fun!

[@VK2AAK]

What a shame you didn't test actual antenna wire ... the PVC covered, Kevlar cored braid stuff sold by the likes of TET Emtron sprecifically for making wire antennas.

[@DonzLockz]

A great test, I was only thinking about this the other day. Appreciate the effort you did on this test. VK1DON 73

[@VicGreenBitcoin]

A silver antenna works the best

[@justicelut]

Thanks, very little difference really!

[@winstonchurchill6506]

Metal cable is a good option tried tree branches once no good....📡📡

[@hanssundkvist]

👍

[@UcantBeSerious03]

10:24 ARE YOU SERIOUS?

[@agalah408]

Sure. Dianne VK3JDI made it. It is life size and lives in the corner of our lounge room. The eyes are table tennis balls painted black. It won first prize in the Berwick Show as 'best exhibit'. At Christmas time we stick branches in its head and pretend that its a reindeer.

[@UcantBeSerious03]

@@agalah408 That's great!

[@stigkristiansen6260]

The test donøt shot the real world, as there is a huge differens in the wire size. Therefore the area, and also the skin effect is different from band to band, so it testing on 10m will not give the same result ad 160m.

[@agalah408]

What you say is true, but repeating the test for every band generates other problems. Poles must be much higher, minimum test distances further. Logistics of doing same tests on 160M are prohibitive without a much bigger investment in time, space and money. Still, feel free to give it a go yourself. perhaps you can share the results.

[@thomasmaughan4798]

"so it testing on 10m will not give the same result ad 160m" Thassright. Where it matters is for clad, plated wires where the outer surface is a different metal.

[@antoniohenriques7156]

No diference????? It is a big diference, I can see 3 db, so when we use steel we loose half of the power. This means that there are no more Radio Amateurs, that's also why we see a lot of morons on the bands. Any way a very good test.

[@ChaplainDaveSparks]

*BARBED WIRE?* Really? 😀 It’s interesting to see the number on your chart. IIRC, it had one of the lowest lengths. (Maybe it has a low _"velocity factor"_ because the electrons have to slow down around those sharp barbs.😀) I guess if it’s what you have (and you mount it so the lowest point is above the height of a human). I *SUPPOSE* the barbs might be acting as miniature _”capacity hats”._ *73 de AF6AS in **_“DM13”_** land*kzbin.infogaming/emoji/7ff574f2/emoji_u1f600.png

[@justinrantonw9jwr885]

TLDR; 14:08

[@boydlewis8747]

say aluminum CORRECTLY. the other thing is you said you calibrate the antenna first, how? do the lengths differ for different materials?

[@agalah408]

Aluminium was pronounced correctly, because that's how it's spelt. (7:49) We have no control over the strange ways that the USA pronounces things. Yes lengths do vary for different materials. look at: 2:06 and 2:20

[@boydlewis8747]

@@agalah408 You Brits need to learn that ur country might have originated a lot off stuff, we Americans pronounce things better, thats what we do. Ha!

[@barryinn1778]

You didn't tell us the results, wasted my time watching this, which wire did the best?

[@agalah408]

The results were posted as tables at 14:08 and 14:30 into the video. Maybe you clicked ahead too fast.