This may be very un-Ham-like but mine has been buried in
Texas dirt and rocks for 20 years and keeps on trucking.

Works as good today as the day it was buried.

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 06:19:43 -0400, wrote:

Roger, just what is that white loamy stuff around the base of your tower
aside from ALL the coax? You need to show us a photo of the tower and

That's Michigan rain! :-)) in December. Although...it's usually a
lot deeper, but nothing like my daughter gets out in the mountains of
Colorado. They had 9 feet in two days last winter. The snow was
drifting up against the sliding door to their deck...On the second
story. Actually it was about 3 feet up on the windows in the door.
The snow was above the tops of the first story windows all the way
around.

Here's the link to the whole tower story...it's been posted a few
times before. All put up by me...with the help of a few friends who
pulled on the rope(s)

http://www.rogerhalstead.com/tower.htm

what you have hanging on it. It that sand that has blown up, opps, that
not sand. Your call tells me your in the northeast. So it must be

Great Lakes actually and Midland Michigan to be a bit more precise.

snnnnnow. I got COLD just looking at it. Have a nice warm day.

Hey! It made it all the way to the 50s today. OTOH it's the 20s for
tonight with more of that "Michigan Rain". The day that photo was
shot *might* have made a high of 20 F.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

Marylou, N"5"XXX.

Roger Halstead wrote:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 11:43:03 GMT, Russ wrote:

Remember that a right-angle bend is best served by 2, 45 degree bends
with a short straight section between them. This will make pulling
cable much easier. A "pull-box" at corners is a good idea as well but
environment-resistant (not "proof", that's not possible!) pull-boxes
aren't cheap or easy to find.

If you are using PVC it's fairly easy to make a pull box. Use a ' Y'
and a 45 to make each 90 degree bend. (They also make a straight
through with a 45 off one side.) Then use a cap and short piece of
pipe for the "blind side, or pull side". As you are pulling right
out of the 'Y' it is darn near a straight pull. Pull up into the 'Y'
.. Then feed the "fish tape" in from the next pulling point and pull
on.

Once past a pull point you can have an assistant either pushing the
cables toward the inside radius of the bend, squirting in wire soap,
or both. If the bundle is pulling hard just a light tap with a rubber
mallet handle can work like magic.

When finished, take a pipe/conduit cap and glue it to a short length
of conduit of the proper size. Liberally grease the end that goes
into the 'Y' and push it in as far as it will easily go.

It may not be water proof, but it can be close to it.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

Russ, who is responsible for a lot of cable-pulling through conduit

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 06:19:43 -0400, wrote:

Roger, just what is that white loamy stuff around the base of your tower
aside from ALL the coax? You need to show us a photo of the tower and
what you have hanging on it. It that sand that has blown up, opps, that
not sand. Your call tells me your in the northeast. So it must be
snnnnnow. I got COLD just looking at it. Have a nice warm day.
Marylou, N"5"XXX.

Roger Halstead wrote:

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 21:14:06 -0400, "Tarmo Tammaru"
wrote:


"Roger Halstead" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 20:39:15 GMT, yea right wrote:
You might need to use some wire pulling soap (the gooey yellow stuff)
to push the LMR-400 through, but the stuff is stiff enough I would
expect it to go through fine.

It t takes a good can to two cans to get a cable through my 4 inch
conduit now that it has so many cables in it. The yellow stuff is
easy to clean up

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

Roger,

If you are going to the trouble of using some kind of conduit, and assuming
it comes in 10 foot lengths, why not just push it through one piece at a
time? That is, push the coax through the pieces of pipe before you join the
pipes together. Besides, LMR400 is pretty stiff.

In my case I have 75 feet horizontal with two 45 bends at each end and
a 3 foot rise at the tower and 86 feet horizontal into the basement.
Getting more into that takes lots of soap and one hefty snake and it
still gets hung up at times.

http://www.rogerhalstead.com/cablebox.htm
There are (I'd have to go count to be sure now), 7 runs of LMR 400, 2
runs of RG-6 for the UHF TV antennas, One does everything cable to the
C/Ku band dish with rotor and polarization, two 3/8ths inch rotor
cable with one used for the rotor and the other for the remote antenna
switch.

With a single run of LMR 400 in 3/4 inch, I think pushing it through
one at a time would work fine. Although for no more than 20 or 30
feet...probably twice that you could easily push one run through the
full length. I'd guess you could push it through far longer runs than
that.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)
Tam/WB2TT

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 20:39:15 GMT, yea right wrote:

I would like to bury my coax for a distance of about 20ft. The location
consist of 6" of crushed decorative rocks over the top of very rocky soil.

I intend to take the LMR-400 coax and push it through a garden hose to add
a layer of protection. However, I am worried that condensation will
quickly fill the airspace of the hose with water and it will either
penetrate the coax outer jacket or interfere with the performance of it in
some unknown negative way.

Just an added note.
As you are going through crushed rock and rocky soil I'd use some form
of protection for the coax simply because it only takes someone
stepping on the crushed rock in the right place to cut the jacket.

Now the stuff will probably work for years even with the jacked holed.

The strange thing is: I just picked up a new 144/440 antenna to use
for the rig in the shop. I picked up a roof tripod, but got to
thinking the tower is only about 25 feet from the shop. So...I have
about a 25 foot buried run. I happened to have a bunch of 1/2 inch
PVC conduit. LMR-400 fits with lots of room to spare. Loose enough
that you could probably push it through 50 feet of the conduit. Just
be sure to bevel the inside of the ends so the coax doesn't catch on
them. You don't even have to use sealant on the conduit. It's sole
purpose is mechanical protection and it only costs a few dollars per
section. And you can push the coax around the sweeping 90s.

I now speak from experience using the 1/2 inch conduit on a slightly
longer run than you were talking about. I've also added another 100
feet of bare #2 ground wire and 4 8' ground rods CadWelded together.

I use a hydraulic drill I made which drills a hole deep enough to just
drop in the ground rod in about a minute (in clay).

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)


I can not flood the garden hose with petroleum oil as it will soon eat
through the PVC jacket of the coax or garden hose. Ideally, I would like
to flood the hose with the same stuff they put into underground cables. It
has a honey consistency and is not easily displaced by water. I was hoping
for some type of silicon oil but am unable to find anything similar at the
hardware store.

Anybody have any suggestions?