Chrome or nickel plated copper tube source?

[ ... Teflon sleeving ... ]

Actually, Teflon insulation is usually found as the insulator between the center conductor and the shield of RF cables. The higher the frequency, the more the current concentrates on the surface, so silver is preferred to any other coating, because it has the highest conductivity.

Of course, there is Teflon-insulated hookup wire, but that tends to be more expensive than most other insulations, so the extra cost of silver plating is relatively minor. And such wire is more often terminated by crimping than by soldering, and good crimp terminals work better when crimped onto something a bit harder than solder -- especially over time, so again, silver is better than solder tinned wire. The terminals made by AMP are usually silver-plated for the high end ones, or cadmium-plated for the rest.

Also, the Teflon insulation is at its best resisting elevated temperatures -- which would soften solder, thus reducing the quality of the crimped connection.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols
Loading thread data ...

Agreed.

Q is a matter of ratio of reactance to resistance. If radiation resistance is in the neighborhood of 50 ohms, an ohm or so of loss resistance in the conductive element(s) having radiation resistance in the neighborhood of 50 ohms is of little consequence in Q or antenna transfer function.

Further, the loss is in ratio of bulk resistivity of copper vs that of nickel because skin effect applies to both. In either case the loss is nearly irrelevant in an antenna with radiation resistance signifcantly higher than the loss resistance of the conductor with which the antenna is realized.

Reply to
Don Foreman

I made a cable for interfacing my GPSR to external power and computer using some multiconductor, unsheathed wire I got from Boeing Surplus. The insulation feels like teflon and it can definitely take the heat. I have a pretty skookum heat gun for doing the shrinking, don't recall the watts off hand. I used some of the thin wall teflon heat shrink and it worked fine for sheathng my cable. Yes, I realize it's serious overkill but the reel of TFE heat shrink also came from Boeing Surplus at a real good price and I don't have any polyolefin that was long enough.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Edwards

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.