I have about 1000 meters of trench laid in the redwood, oak, and fir forest:
I don't have a better photo handy of the forest, but let me assure you that it's almost as dense as the county government. Most of the conduit is flexible black plastic irrigation pipe. I think it's about
7/8" ID. There were plenty of roots to deal with, but with care, they were usually avoided. The path is anything but a straight line. The upper 300mm of dirt is mostly mulch from the falling leaves, and is easily penetrated. Below that is soft clay, which is easy to dig, especially when wet. For most of the run, I used a pick and narrow blade shovel. For the few hills and mounds, I used a "horizontal directional drill". The original was a 10ft length of 3/4" steel pipe, with a cutter bit on one end, a water hose crammed into the other, and spun with a 3/4" Milwaukee drill motor.General instructions and good things to know:
When I had to drill under the road, the compacted base rock stalled the drill motor. So, I rented a larger version at the local equipment rental yard. In all cases, you start with a small hole, and enlarge it with a back-reamer.
I didn't do all the work myself. The job was done over a roughly 1 year period and required the involvement of about 5 people, one experienced underground construction person, and an indeterminate quantity of beer. The result is a neighborhood alarm, intercom, shared internet, and multi-player game network for the kids. It was also used as a bootleg satellite/CATV system, until we were caught.
Incidentally, the biggest headache was drilling through buried construct scrap left by the builders of some of the houses. We found what was left of a chain saw and part of an old washing machine.
I've also done trenching with a small Ditchwitch. It was ok for flat open areas and was available from a rental yard.
Kinda like a large chain saw with buckets attached to a big lawn mower.
How many thousands? I have friends that simply hung CAT5 from the telephone poles. No permission was asked or granted, but it's still there after perhaps 5 years.
Did you try asking? It may be a concern, but if done properly, nothing will be seen or affected.
I also have some wires in the trees. The big problem is squirrels. They'll eat anything, even if tastes bad. On the ground, it's the mice chewing on the cable. Make sure that nobody is eating when laying cable, and that you "wash" the cable with alcohol or something that removes the smell of food. I have about 500 meters of quad shielded RG-6a/u hanging in the trees. No problems for about 5 years.
Agreed. The problem is the Fresnel Zone. At 300ft range, you need:
a clearance at midpoint of about 5 ft radius about the line of sight. That also means the antennas will need to be mounted at least 5ft off the ground or the ground ends up in the Fresnel zone. In my dense forest, that's impossible, thus we use mostly buried cable. Incidentally, the cables were installed long before cheap wireless. We tried wireless, failed, gave up, and went back to cable.
Permit me to dash your hopes. The problem with having something in the line of sight or inside the Fresnel Zone is not signal loss. It's huge variations in signal levels. What will probably happen with better hardware and better antennas is that you will find a combination of antenna locations that will give you a signal. However, you will soon find that the signal will not stay put and will vary radically in level. Worese, you will have multipath, which will result in a miserable error rate, even with an indicated strong signal.
If you're going to do it anyway, get the biggest, ugliest, most overkill dish or panel antennas at both ends. If possible find a
5.8GHz link as the Fresnel Zone is only 3ft radius. Play with the antenna positions (i.e. don't pour concrete for the mounts) as you may need to move the antennas as the trees move around.I'm not going to recommend any equipment until I have a clue how much money you want to spend on this exercise.
Gotta run.... I'm late.