Help with home made Antenna with copper cable

Hello everyone,

I am planning on making my own horizontal dipole antenna using copper cable. I am planning on tuning it for the 11m range in TX. However I plan on scanning mainly and listening around generally in the HF area. I came across speaker copper cable because it is covered in a layer of transparent plastic (picture attached). I think it’s better to have this to protect the copper cable from the elements. That being said a question arises, will it add inefficiency to the copper cable dipole antenna? Will it be better if I just purchase bare copper wire? Or would it have absolutely no effect?


Thank you for your help,


73

Covered wire will work with no problem.
I have what looks like single strand speaker wire as my main HF aerial TX/RX on it spot on.

Either will work fine, but the theoretical length will differ slightly due to the velocity factor.  However, the installation will affect length far more, hence the advice to cut long and fold back.

So then it’s speaker wire, thank you so much guys.

73