I rented the smallest walk behind trencher from the local Home Depot, it
cuts about a 2" wide trench and will go down at least 12". By not
getting close to tree trunks to avoid any large roots and to minimize
any tree damage, I cut a 300' run through a forest for 1 1/4" conduit.
The cable guys here do that with a flat blade shovel like widget and
drop in flooded RG6, but for me, the trencher was the way to go. About
$100/day, and I think that included the trailer. Of course it depends
on soil, roots, and rocks but 100' an hour was no sweat.
Another way, if a tractor is big enough and there is enough space
between trees is to pull a cable or conduit/pipe with a Kellems grip
attached to the back of a single point ripper. Did that to replace
6000' of 1" pvc to a spring, but some rocky areas did need a ride on
trencher. We could pull/bury 200' to 400' at a time of 1" pvc glued
pipe about 12" down in CA adobe. Messenger RG6 might pull a long way.
Grant KZ1W
On 11/9/2015 11:38 AM, Dave Olean wrote:
I was transmitting on 160 last week, and after calling a CQ I noted that the background
noise from one of my beverages dropped to almost nothing. Something obviously broke right
then. All checks pointed to something external to the shack. I finally got out in the
woods and checked the antenna system. All looked great. I used my new SARK-110 vector
network analyzer and saw very believable results when connected to my 1100 ft long Europe
beverage: about 75 ohms impedance and a VSWR that fluctuated between 1.5 and maybe 1.8:1
across the freq range. I double checked the entire beverage run for shorts or anomalies,
and even took apart the termination box to make sure all was OK. The last thing left was
the 1000 ft run of flooded RG-6 coax. I had run the cable on the ground back to the house
about 2 years ago. It was mostly invisible now, being covered with leaves and moss etc
etc. A TDR check showed gross "bad" things and a VOM test across the center pin
to ground showed a resis
ta
nce of 35 ohms while the far end was terminated in a 75 ohm load. Obviously
the cable was compromised. I made a quick inspection and found a few spots
where small animals had chewed on the coax enough to break through the outer
plastic covering and into the braid and aluminum foil shield. Water and gunk
have caused a low resistance between center pin and the shield.
What are my options now? I don't want to spend another $150 for another
roll of coax just so a squirrel can feast on the PVC. Should I route the coax
in the air and away from small mouths? That is one option. It seems that
digging a 1000 ft trench thru the woods and burying it would work, but it would
be an awful big chore for a 70 year old doofus. I doubt that I could manage
that. If I run the coax above ground, I run the risk of picking up noise etc. I
also worry about falling limbs and old dead trees falling on it. With a few
beverages in the woods, I can't afford to spend $150 each time an animal feasts
on it. I need to do something different!
Incidentally, the beverage still has great directivity, but signals are
very weak with the bad cable. It is barely useable now as a result.
73
Dave K1WHS
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