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Re: [TowerTalk] Field telephone wire for radials

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Field telephone wire for radials
From: N1BUG <paul@n1bug.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2020 09:53:45 -0500
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
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.
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