Hi All,
I feel like this has been done to death - and yet, the Internet has really been
notoriously awful with misinformation for me the past few weeks. I appreciate
your thoughts as I work through this!
I'm putting up a new tower primarily for HF and maybe some VHF. Given my ideal
location is some ~350ft+ from the shack, I've been waffling back and forth as
to whether to remote the radios in an enclosure, or bring Heliax back. I'm
leaning toward the Heliax route.
I'm working with an experienced (decades) climber/tower company in my area
(Minnesota), who has used 7/8" Heliax for $1.50/ft. This seems reasonable, and
a fraction of new, thus making my project seem doable. Sadly may require an
underground splice due to lengths, but one battle at a time. I'm open to other
sources for such things.
Herein lies the rub -- my climber's experience has been (and probably yours as
well) that directly burying this in our frozen tundra eventually results in
crushed cable through thawing and freezing. I'm considering 3" or 4" HDPE
conduit/innerduct to alleviate that, but given I'll need to go through a
valley, condensate will condensate in the dip no matter what I do. I could
perhaps drop the conduit down 36+" deep to avoid the frost level, but it'll
still be sitting in water (albeit not frozen at that depth) without active
moisture management in the run (fan, nitrogen (ugh), whatever - not feasible).
I feel like at this point I'm really overthinking it. Fiber to the tower and
radios in a box would be much easier, but less desirable - but now I'm really
torn.
I appreciate your feedback immensely,
Jonathan
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|