On 4/28/2012 12:04 PM, Dan Dugan wrote:
>> Rabbits and rodents have to gnaw on things to keep their teeth from
>> curling around and growing into their wee brains. They especially love
>> expensive coaxial mic cables. When recording, always take a number of
>> thin metal stakes about 25 - 30 inches (63 - 76cm) long with a loop at
>> the top through which to thread your cables, thus keeping them off the
>> ground and inaccessible to critters.
> Hmmm, how many more pounds would those add to my pack. Maybe saving up fo=
r digital wireless links=85
>
> -Dan
>
The company I worked for had an acoustic flowmeter division, and one
major customer who I remember as "The Central Arizona Water Distribution
Project", the scope of the project was metering water distribution in
open channels at many locations. An installation required 8 to 16
hydrophones on each side of the channel and usually near a bridge of
some sort to run cables from the far side to a shack housing the
instrumentation. Each hydrophone was connected using hundreds of feet of
RG-59 or RG-108 cable run through a sizable conduit to a computerized
electronics metering system.
Mysteriously, a couple months after installation, these sites started
failing and investigation reveled the cause to be rodents getting into
the conduits and chewing on the cables... The fix at the time was to
make the conduits rodent proof however in the process, the little fury
buggers managed to destroy thousands of feet of cable that had to be
replaced...
I have wondered if during the installation, the handling and pulling of
cables by overheated very sweaty men leaving salty sweat on the HDPE
cable jackets was what attracts the rodents to them. Would simply wiping
the cables with a rag soaked in a fluid that repels rodents solve the
problem of rodents chewing on cables in the short term? Far easier to
carry a rag and a small bottle containing a solution than trying to use
supports?
--
--
Mitch Hill
(Sent from HP DV6T)
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