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Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:14:47
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
From: "Rik Strobbe" <rik.strobbe@fys.kuleuven.ac.be>
Subject: RE: LF: Wire, for LF Antennas
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At 08:37 30/06/00 +0100, G4JNT wrote:
>There is also the issue of reduced skin depth and extra losses when
>using steel wire, or any other magnetic material for that matter.   Skin
>depth reduces as the square root of relative permeability, which for
>steel wire is several thousand.

Following might be interesting :

Aluminium has a lower conductivity compared to Copper (1.76 lower) but has
a higher skin-depth (on 136kHz : .18mm for Cu, 0.24 for Al).
The result is that for wires with a diameter of more than 1mm Al is only
32% worse than Cu. Or otherwise, a 1.3mm Al wire will have the same losses
as a 1mm Cu wire while the weight of 1.3mm Al wire is only half of 1mm Cu
wire.

73, Rik  ON7YD