Topband: Wanted - Hardline connectors

[Bill Wichers]

Squirrel chew is the biggest cause for aerial outages for most telecom operators. It's a big deal -- you can even get single and double-armored fiber to help with that. It's less of a problem with underground cables although I know of a large telephone outage in northern Michigan several years ago that was due to a beaver chewing on an underground fiber optic cable that ran along an interstate...

For all the "use steel pipe" posts, why not just use regular ol' conduit? There are three kinds: EMT (the thinwall stuff you see the most), then IMT and Rigid. Rigid conduit is a lot like galvanized steel water pipe but with less taper to the threads. It's available from any electrical supply house and I think home depot has it too in the smaller sizes. You can bend it in a conduit bender (a 3/4" EMT bender will bend 1/2" rigid). Electrical conduit will probably be more useful than fence rail since you'd have all the electrical fittings available to use with the conduit.

  -Bill

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jim
> GM
> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 12:23 PM
> To: topband
> Subject: Re: Topband: Wanted - Hardline connectors
> 
> City has a rat infestation.  Digging all kinds of holes under peoples wooden
> decks.  They did some construction work in the street and drove them out.
> They never addresses the problem before it happened.
> 
> They at through Time Warners under ground main feed for 400 homes, node
> line, they have to replace a 300 foot section in the same spot every 6 months.
> Galvanized pipe  schedule 40 or better yet 80 pipe with cable inside should
> slow the varmints down for a while.
> 
> --
> Jim K9TF
> _________________
> Topband Reflector