I have two very thick and long antenna cables in conduits to a pair of pedestals that I constructed on my property. One is from my house to a pedestal (about 145 feet) and the other is from my barn to the other pedestal (about 75 feet) which is 135 meters away from the first.
Both worked fine, and I collected a lot of data, especially on the one near my house. But, I removed the antennas for a while and the ends were exposed to the weather. Now neither one works (i.e. zero satellites). Antenna is Zephyr 3, receiver is Trimble Alloy. They work together with smaller shorter cables when directly connected, so it is not a problem with receiver or antenna.
I sprayed contact cleaner in the exposed end, still didn't work. Applied some marine grease, still nothing. Any suggestions on how to rehabilitate the cables without removing them from the conduits?
Stick the ends of each antenna cable into a large jar filled with rice. Seal the opening so moisture from the atmosphere can't get inside. Protect this setup from rain intrusion. Let it set 2-4 weeks then test to see if the rice absorbed enough moisture to eliminate the short between the feed and ground elements.
@peter-lothian interesting idea, i will give it a try
John, I suspect the water caused corrosion and the only fix will be snipping the end off beyond the corrosion and reinstalling the coax connector. Hopefully you have enough slack cable to do that.
Not sure if I mentioned, but there is a "pig tail" adapter at the end to go from one connector type to another type. It hadn't occurred to me that the problem could be there. Yesterday I looked at that cable, and it was corroded. Cleaned it out, everything works fine now. So using contact cleaner and dielectric grease on both exposed ends works well