4
Metres 1 X 0.7mm Solid Core Connection And Coil Wire
Solid core wire is used as it plugs into the
breadboard more easily than stranded wire. Enameled copper
wire is more normally used for winding the coils, but the
insulated copper wire is easier to handle if there is room in
the design, and the electrical results are equally good. The
colour of the insulation may differ. About three metres
is used to wind the two radio coils and 1 metre for the other
interconnections to the speaker, variable capacitor, and to make
the wire jumpers used on the breadboard.
This is tinned copper wire. It is copper wire with a thin
coating of tin which prevents slow oxidation of the copper
underneath. Purists might prefer to use untinned copper wire for
coil winding. High frequency radio alternating currents tend to
flow mostly along the outside of the wire due to a phenomenon
called skin effect. Tin has a higher resistivity than copper, so
it could be argued that we're effectively adding resistance and
loss to the radio signals by using tinned wire. This would cause
the quality factor Q in the coil to drop, resulting in lower
sensitivity and broader tuning. In practice, I've not been able
to detect any difference in the performance in this radio.
Finding untinned equipment hookup wire like that is quite hard,
usually involving several rounds of email questions and a test
purchase from any given supplier. After that, they will usually
send you ten reels of the tinned stuff and somehow expect you to
like it:)
How do you spell, "enameled?" I'm doing it the wrong way that's
used in the US to stop the spell checker whingeing at me and
obscuring other genuine typographical errors.
Henry's email address:
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