I've seen real-life cases with high-Q microstrip structures where gold
plating actually caused a significant lowering of efficiency. As you
point out, nickel is used as a barrier metal to prevent alloying of the
gold with the underlying copper. If the gold isn't at least several skin
depths thick, significant current flows in the nickel. Nickel is a
particularly poor RF conductor, very much worse than copper, because the
skin depth in nickel is decreased dramatically by its ferromagnetic
permeability. So, if you're able to calculate skin depth, and know what
you're doing, and are willing to use quite a bit of gold (particularly
necessary at HF and below) you can achieve efficiency with gold plating
that's pretty much indistinguishable from that of copper. If you don't
know what you're doing, it is possible to substantially degrade the
efficiency by gold plating. I'm sure somebody could be conned into
buying one, though.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr. wrote:

Hi Gang

Since the radiation of an antenna is done primarily on the surface of
the elements (or wire) would gold plating the elements increase the
efficiency of the antenna in any way?

Gold sounds expensive, but if thin enough, one ounce of gold could
plate an entire football field. Brass corrods, nickel is usually used
as the first plating before another metal like gold is plated over
that. If the cost for gold over the cost of brass is only about 1
buck per foot of element length, making cost not relavent to the
question. Would a gold plated antenna work better than aluminum or
nickel plated?

TTUL
Gary