Topband: Why do rodents eat coax?

[Tom W8JI]

Squirrels and rats can be a problem, but mostly my cable chew issues have 
been from raccoons. I used to trap them and deport them a few miles.

Now I just I bury my cables. Even a few inches of dirt is enough. Where they 
come up out of ground, I sleeve them with cheap plastic sprinkler pipe.

You can splice out the bad areas, but you have to bury, sleeve, or fix 
whatever is eating it.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Olean" <k1whs at metrocast.net>
To: <topband at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2015 2:38 PM
Subject: Topband: Why do rodents eat coax?


>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 resista
> 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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