David,
How far do you have your posts apart? I live in northern MN and the frost
line is deep here, so 2ft will down will not cut it for me.
Since I have thousands of feet of EHS, I will use that as a support line.
73
NJ0F
-----Original Message-----
From: David Robbins
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2016 2:05 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Coax above ground
I have hundreds of feet of elevated feed and control lines here, I try to
keep them 6-8' up so I can walk and mow under them. in one spot I have a
drawbridge where I can pull up the wires to about 12' to get trucks and
backhoes under it. a 10' pressure treated 4x4 here is only put down about
2' in the ground and does just fine. I use eyebolts on each side at the top
to get 2 runs where needed with usually 1/4" guy wire as a carrier... just
because I had lots of left over pieces after putting up the towers. It does
last much better than aircraft cable but isn't as easy to work with
obviously.
While others will insist on using wire ties and other stuff all mine is
suspended with the cheapest electrical tape I can find. Usually I end up
cutting it off when adding new cables before it has to be replaced because
the tape failed... though recently I have had to go around on some of the
older runs and add a few more layers here and there where some of them were
stretching a bit or dried out and cracked.
I wouldn't worry about birds, they are unlikely to cause anything more than
a few droppings here and there. the biggest threat around here are
porcupines that are known to like the taste of aluminum hardline for some
reason. one cable company engineer gave up and started putting scrap pieces
at the bottom of his poles to save them from having to climb to chew on the
stuff at the top. Porcupines are also known to eat car brake lines, plastic
bumpers, car tires, and have even gnawed on the t-111 on my house and
garage. Creating a good open area around the house and garage and towers
seems to have kept them away from edible stuff for many years now.
David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net:7373
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