On 10/5/2010 10:06 AM, Jim Higgins wrote:
On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 19:31:38 -0700 (PDT), Art Unwin
wrote:

Antennas usually are made of aluminum as copper is somewhat heavier
and silver and gold is to expensive. Since lead is now banned in a lot
of places especially with solder you can now buy solder that is doped
with Bismuth !
Now you can't coat your elements with it but if you have a solder
bath you can run copper wire thru it. The bismuth is brittle
but with the underlying copper it is stiff enough to stick it on the
antenna elements. I am assuming that the applied current would travel
along the bismuth coating instead of the aluminum and therefore should
increase gain for antennas that use coupling methods such as the Yagi
tho bandwidth may well suffer some what.
What do you think?

As we all know, you are CLUELESS! And you never check underlying facts.
Never. Ever.



I think the RF current flowing thru the crystallized bismuth will
result in the Peltier occurring and will cause the outer ends of the
elements to become very cold and the inner ends to become very hot and
that the heat will soften the inner portions and the cold will cause
heavy icing on the outer portions weighing them down considerably, the
combination resulting in the elements bending and destroying the
antenna.
`
As the Brothers Guinness said in their famous television ads - "BRILLIANT!!"

tom
K0TAR