Re: [IRCA] More coax experiments

[Rick Kunath <k9ao@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chuck Hutton wrote:

> For short distances, go to Home Depot and get the (usually) gray plastic
> conduit that is used to run outdoor wiring. Then bury your coax without
> worrying about it being direct burial or not.

Just doing a quick Google on CATV hardline pricing...

It looks like .500 PE jacketed and flooded aluminum CATV hardline is 
going for about $0.65 per foot. (This is cheaper than what questionable 
quality quad-shield direct burial stuff I've Googled.)

It's probably cheaper than burying some PVC pipe and pulling non-flooded 
cable through it.

Without the flooding compound between the jacket and the shield, you 
can't control condensation and water ingress, and you'll have that in an 
underground installation as the non-flooded cable breathes with 
temperature changes. Although with the PVC at least you can fish new 
cable in at any time without digging up the yard. I'd still pull in 
flooded cable if you went the PVC pipe route.

Flooding compound is a sticky goo that prevents water from getting into 
the cable even with a jacket cut and prevents water movement.

The down side with the CATV hardline is that you need a jacket removal 
tool, coring tool, and center conductor cleaning tool. (Cable Prep is my 
favorite brand.) And these are specific to any cable size, so tools for 
.500 won't work on .750, etc. But once you have them,they last a long 
time, and aren't expensive.

The good thing about .500 cable is that not many CATV systems still use 
it, so you can pretty well scrounge connectors, splices, adapters, and 
reuse them and get cut-offs, ends of rolls, and tear outs cheap from 
your local cable system's cable scrap yard. And since there is only a 
thin copper coating over the aluminum center conductor of aluminum 
hardline, the aluminum stuff isn't exactly a hot commodity with copper 
recyclers yet.

Jacketed and flooded aluminum hardline is a lot easier to handle than 
rolled PVC, but not quite as easy as jointed PVC, though you'll 
eventually have leaks with jointed PVC as the ground shifts.

I think if I were there, I'd want to do a quick test with an antenna-end 
sleeve-type choke (leaving your plastic box and existing matching 
transformer as is) and see what happens with the existing cable before I 
got to doing anything else.

Rick Kunath



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