Hello Dick,

Whether you can solder the chicken mesh depends on the amount of
oxides. When it is very glossy (like a fresh soldered PCB), you may use
solder with a flux core (as you use for normal electronic assembly or
rework). I do not like this method for large solder jobs.

However, when it looks dull, you should use the aggressive paste or
liquid flux in combination with solder without flux (as used by
plumbers). The liquid flux (I think zinc solution in hydrochloric
acid) works well (I'm still using it) However, after soldering, you
have to clean thoroughly with abundant warm water with soap to avoid
corrosion. The aggressive flux stays active, also at normal
temperature.

I prefer the aggressive flux in combination with cleaning. After
cleaning, you can use normal flux core solder.

When I solder several pieces of mesh together, I first strap them
together with metal wire (in their final position), so I can fully
concentrate myself on the soldering.

I do not know your radial arrangement, but when the mesh will replace
the radials, I would remove them.

When the existing radial wires are not insulated, you may get
unreliable contact between the mesh and the radials. In combination
with small mechanical movements (wind), this may generate noise.

As the conductivity of wire mesh is not that good and somewhat
unpredictable, you may put (solder) small radial (about 30cm) wires
from the point where you ground your coaxial feeder.

I hope this will help you.

Wim
PA3DJS

Thank you Wim

I have in my household toolbox a good supply of a very agressive flux which
I often use as a final attempt to solder to some modern PL259 connectors.
I just tin the surface with the aid of agressive flux then clean it all up
before soldering normally. I think this and plumbers solder may work. When
the roll of ckicken wire is delivered I will try a test run.

As the ground mat will be of a lossy material I am hoping the large number
of effective rf paths in parallel will mean that losses will be reduced. My
present radial system is four insulated wires that run to drains at four
corners of the roof and the down inside the plastic drain pipes to ground
level. Approximately 16 metres each. There are a futher four radials which
onle go to the edge of the roof but are only about 4 metres long each. I
would lose these four short radials but keep the longer ones. The wire mesh
mat would be 6M by 7M and would be much better than those short radials. I
can solder a few radial wires from the base of the antenna to the mesh.
However if I solder each wire to the mesh at, say, 500mm intervals I could
end up with more galvanic corrosion particularly as the air is very salty in
Dover.

The weather is changing and I think I chose a bad time to start this :-(

Dick G4BBH