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New ham, here...getting motivated to build some antennas to experiment with and so far my research has shown that stainless steel is not a desirable metal for creating antenna elements - which is a shame because I have access to a LOT of long stainless piano-hinge pin stock.

Would anyone be able to explain what it is about SS that makes it less ideal than aluminum or copper?

Kevin Reid AG6YO
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    Welcome to Amateur Radio Stack Exchange! I think you'll find your answer here: https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/1388/effect-of-different-metals-for-antenna-elements — in brief, stainless steel not conductive enough to make a good antenna. I'm going to close this as a duplicate, but if there's something you still need explained, please [edit] your question to specify. (But thanks for asking, regardless — this is a well-written question, and duplicates still help people searching for answers.) – Kevin Reid AG6YO Jul 17 '19 at 03:03
  • thank you..I did a bit of searching here but didn't find that one. –  Jul 17 '19 at 03:24
  • Sure stainless is "less conductive", but that doesn't mean it's not conductive enough. Plenty of antennas have been made with stainless steel. – Phil Frost - W8II Jul 22 '19 at 17:23
  • the 4-element Yagi I built with the stainless seemed to work pretty good for Rx, and I don't really have a way to measure the difference between that and the one I just built with aluminum..so I was relying on the theory. –  Jul 22 '19 at 19:52

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