[TowerTalk] Hardline Fault

[Don Moman VE6JY]

Any decent TDR will easily find that fault.

Don
VE6JY

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Roger Parsons <ve3zi at yahoo.com> wrote:

> For about 15 years I have been using CATV type flooded hardline lying
> on the ground to feed my receiving antennas. It has worked very well,
> and until now I have had no failures caused by biting animals. However,
> I recently found that I had a short on one ~500' section. Easy, I thought
> - to cause a short there must be a pretty big bite that has crushed the
> outer into the inner - just follow the cable along until I find it. So I
> did just
> that. Of course the cable had got buried under the forest floor most of the
> way so I had to disturb it in order to check it. I found lots of small bite
> marks, but no big ones.
>
>
> The problem is that when I got the far end and measured the resistance,
> the short had disappeared - my moving the cable presumably moved
> the outer a few microns away from the inner.
>
>
> If I had been sensible and used a TDR to find the approximate location
> of the short I would only have a small section of cable to check carefully.
> I do not believe that a TDR would now find what can only be a very small
> discontinuity somewhere along the length.
>
> Now, I have no idea whatsoever how to find where the fault was, and
>
> can think of no way of avoiding it recurring just when the P5 finally gets
> onto 160m other than replacing the whole length.
>
> Anybody got any bright ideas?
>
> 73 Roger
> VE3ZI
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TowerTalk mailing list
> TowerTalk at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
>