Radio World’s Workbench by John Bisset is one of the industry’s most-admired, and most-copied, columns. Find out why in each issue.
RW Newsbytes will feature a tech tip each week from Workbench. This one is from the June 18 issue.
In another life Joel O’Brien worked for Warner Cable in direct sales. Joel sends in a tip learned from the cable techs on how to run cable long distances in conduit.
Joel starts with a spool of good fishing line. He then walks the line the length of conduit, unspooling it as he goes along.
The next step is to tie a small rag, maybe 1 by 3 inches or so, to the end of the line. Tie it tight!
It doesn’t matter if the conduit is buried or not. Stuff the rag tie into the conduit as much as you can. Then go to the other end of the conduit. Take your shop vacuum, put the hose right over the conduit and turn on the vac.
The rag tie should pull the fishing line through the conduit; then you can tightly tie the cable or wire you want to snake through and pull it the length of the conduit.
Joel says this worked for him when he needed to run 400 feet of RG-6 from the pole to his house. He thought this might be one of those things everyone knew. Maybe so, maybe not; with so many new engineers, tips like these are helpful to us all.
Find thousands of helpful tech tips for radio engineers and managers at radioworld.com under the Workbench and Tech Tips tabs. E-mail your own tips to [email protected]. Submissions qualify for SBE recertification credit.
