Tubing

[Super28]

I have a 12" piece of Stainless Steel 316 Hypodermic Tubing, 22 Gauge, 0.028" OD, 0.0215" ID, 0.0035" Wall, . What I need to know  is what size do I need, that this piece will fit into to make a two piece antenna?

[NOBLNG]

I’m not sure what that will fit into, but you could use either some .020” beading wire or a .014” guitar string inside of it.

[peteski]

If the ID (Inside Diameter) of the tubing is 0.0215" then any wire smaller than 0.0215" in diameter should slide into the tubing.  Greg proposed 0.020" wire - that'll work.

But that size seems a touch thick for a 1:25 model car (assuming that is what you have).  The 0.028" tubing in 1:25 scale comes out to 0.028 X 25 = 0.7" in 1:1 scale  0.7" would be but thick for an antenna.

I have used this  technique for making antennas, but I used thinner hypodermic tubing, and thinner stainless steel wire for the top segment.  Here is a 3-piece antenna made this way.  This is on 1:32 scale car.

I don't recall what size tubing I used. I would have to dig that car out of storage and measure it.  I'm pretty sure though that the top segment wire is 0.005".

I used to buy my tubing from Small Parts Inc., but amazon assimilated them some years ago, and finding anything on amazon website stinks.  I did find another company which sells similar range of tubing, and has an easy to deal with website.  https://componentsupplycompany.com/

 

[Bainford]

Hypo tube comes in an almost unlimited graduation of sizes. The tube you have would fit well in a tube of about .029-.030” ID / .036-.037” OD. But that seems a bit large for an antenna.  You would be better off looking for tube about .020” OD, to fit inside the tube you have, but that’s still a bit large. I use SS hypo tube .016” OD / .010” ID for the larger section of the antenna and .009” steel guitar string for the thin bit.