On 5 Apr 2005 10:18:16 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:
In article , Robert Swinney says...

Jim, I don't think you are referring to old fashioned "grounded" single wire
(literally one wire) telephone service.

That's what they had up the canyon I think. Everyone was on one
line. A pretty remote area. I don't think it was fence wire
though, it was copper.

One pair "C Rural" telephone wire, interesting stuff. Two 14-ga
copper plated steel wires in an oval molded hard jacket - was rubber,
now polyolefin. The copper carried the signal, the steel gave it the
strength. You hang it from the pole with steel wire preforms like on
steel strand.

http://www.superioressex.com/products/osp/c-rural.htm

Designed to be strung under tension like a steel messenger, could go
up to (IIRC) 400' between poles, so they didn't have to use any more
poles than the power company did. Saved them intersetting new poles
to support phone wires in between the power poles.

This wire was designed for feeding that one lone farmhouse 3 or 4
miles off the main road. One big problem, the stuff is a bear to
splice, Nicopress sleeves and solder, then lots of tape... So you'd
take a whole reel of it out, enough to string the whole run as one
piece, and use the tap-feed fittings at each end. Add more taps in
the middle if you needed bridge tap drops for the barn or
outbuildings.

And no twist to it, so it could still pick up noise from power.

This stuff wouldn't make a good SW/MW antenna, unless you were going
for a /really/ long long-wire. And I'm not sure what effects the two
wires in parallel would have, even if you shorted them together at
each end.

-- Bruce -- Ex-Construction Cable Splicer.
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net.