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Old August 15th 11, 10:37 PM
Channel Jumper Channel Jumper is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jan 2011
Posts: 390
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I tried to read all of these posts - but being dyslexic - after a hard days work, I have come to the conclusion - as others has said in the past, any answer with more then 4 replies - stay away.

There is several answers.
The first being that the wire must be at least 14 gauge in order for it to work properly.

I can go into all kinds of details about skin effect and how it all works - but you might just want a simple answer.

The answer is - that the wire does not have to be 100% copper - since the G5RV doesn't appear to be 100% copper - but a copper clad wire.

You do not want to use Stainless Steel - since it is a poor conductor.

To go one step further - even the electric company doesn't use solid copper wire anymore for their high tension wires going from the power generation station to the subs- they use something called Aluminum clad steet core - or ACSC for short.
http://www.astm.org/Standards/B502.htm

The bottom line is Aluminum, copper, bronze, gold, silver are all good conductors.

INsulated wire used as a dipole will radiate - no telling how it will radiate until you try it.
What you need to do is quit being so cheap and buy what you need and build your own antenna.

One very good antenna a ham friend of mine constructed for many of his ham friends is called a double bazooka antenna. Basically it is made out of old RG 8 coax.
http://www.radiowavz.com/html/double_bazooka.html

Because I don't know where you live, I cannot predict how a antenna will work for your situation. One consideration is wind sheer and another is storm damage - hence ice and snow will stretch copper speaker wire to the point of where it will not be resonant. Add to that the fact that it is not designed to be put under any type of strain - hence the longer piece of wire you use - the shorter the lifespan.
Not to mention - how would you join two pieces of speaker wire - when one piece is not long enough? Soldering - won't get it done. Especially if it gets struck by lightning.