At 01:39 AM 8/21/2006, Ian White GM3SEK wrote:
> >On 20 Aug 2006 at 18:45, DOUGLAS SNOWDEN wrote:
> >
> >> I am putting up a vertical for 40m. Yes, I know, but this is all I can
> put up at the moment. I was thinking that I could use a few of those bus
> >>connections like a circuit breaker panel has. You slide the wire in ans
> tighten the screw. Seems like it would be a whole lot quicker than other
> >>methods. Are there other methods like that you guys have used?
> >>
>
> >I use a copper or aluminum plate with stainless steel 2-3 inch #8 or 10
> >hardware. I then use some of the larger solder/crimp lugs. I try to
> >insert as many radial wires in each lug as possible. Seems to work
> >real well and is not expensive or difficult to use.
> >
>
>I am doing something very similar. The method comes from having much
>more time to think about the job (while traveling) than time to actually
>do it. It also rains a lot here, so it's important to do as much prep
>work as possible indoors, and to make all connections permanent and
>waterproof. All that led to the idea of grouping several wires into one
>lug.
You might look into a heavy duty crimper like that used to crimp the
sleeves on steel cable (e.g. one from Felco). You can get copper sleeves,
and I'll bet you could crimp quite a few fairly large wires at once. For
geometric reasons, one might want to do 7 (close packed hexagonal grid)..
or 6 radials out + 1 connection lead.
We used to have one of these crimpers mounted on a bench, and you could
grab the piece parts, shove the wires in, crimp it, and put it in the
shipping box, in about 30 seconds. The key is having that 2 foot long
handle sticking up and the compound jaws. Enormous crimp force, reasonably
precision dies, etc. I'll bet the wire would fail before the crimp would.
The other thing to try might be the flooded wire nuts used for electrical work.
I've also tried shoving a bunch of wires into a short piece of copper pipe
(about as long as the diameter), and then heating it up with a torch and
flooding it with flux and solder. This didn't work as well. Too easy to
heat things too hot, etc.
Jim
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