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Hello Bill and all

To remove the enamel from litz wire I use paint stripper called nitromorse.

Remove all the cotton/plastic insulation from the cable end to be soldered to expose the multi strand enameled wires. Brush the end of cable with a tooth brush to separate the strands and flatten out.

Use the tooth brush to apply the paint stripper to the splayed out cable strands, making sure it gets to all the strands. Leave for about 10 minutes or more, then brush away the disolved enamel. I carry out this process twice to ensure that all enamel has been removed. The final job is to wash the exposed copper cable end with turps etc using a cloth, then start soldering. I strip back about 1 inch of the cable end.

I have used the above procedure a number of times and it works well. Paint stripper and a tooth brush are readily available. This method is also economical on solder, no need for special tools like solder pots and bunsen burners.

Any good paint stripper would do. My contents label says the stripper contains 5 - 20 percent

Methylene dichloride, it does not say what the rest is.

This is dangerous stuff to get on skin, eyes etc and brush away from you so that it does not flick into your eyes or skin.

The container/can specifies what precautions are nessary for use.

I find although 3mm litz wire is marginally better than normal 2.5mm stranded insulated wire the advantage is small compared to the effort required to solder and weight considerations, especially for large loops or horizontal wire antennas. I also have noticed since winding my 0.5 mH loading coil for the vertical with 3 mm litz wire it is more critical to keep on the nose at resonance, possibly because of the higher Q than the previous 2.5 mm multi strand insulated copper wire.

I hope these observations help you.

My current 90 metre perimiter loop uses 2.5 mm insulated wire. I use it for RX only and as said previously I have to throttle the RF gain back on even the very weak signals. I do not use any preamps only the RX or Level meter SPM 12. I cannot see any advantage using litz for this purpose.

To use the loop on TX there would be an advantage using litz but probably the db gain would hardly be noticeable.

Very small loops on LF like 1 metre square etc might be a different story, but this does not apply in my case.

73 de Mal/G3KEV