Those who know me, know I don’t like doing things properly, so it was only natural that the Anemometer for my weather station was wired rather than using an RF link such as an XBee and a solar panel.

I obtained 100 metres of Underground rated CAT5E network cable. A lot of techie people have heard of Underground rated four core cable as it’s used by telephone companies to run the telephone cable through your front lawn to your house. The cable has a hard thick sheath to resist the elements and it’s filled with a sticky gel substance with the consistency of Vaseline.

I wanted to run the cable in a straight line to where my Stevenson Screen is going to be mounted, so I ran a string line and got out the line trimmer to clear two foot wide strip in the paddock.

Unfortunately it ended up being 24 metres long, so I had a decent sized trench to dig… by hand.

Since it was going to be a big digging effort, it made sense to run two cables to future proof against more digging.

I decided to encase the ends of the wire (where they exit the ground) in some old pieces of garden hose as further protection, mainly against the goats.

It turned out to be very hot work at two int he afternoon to dig, but ultimately only took me about two hours to complete.

The open ends of the wires were covered with duct tape to keep them dry in preparation for wiring it all up.

I’ve now got most of the hard work out of the way. Who else do you know who has dual gigabit capacity running to the middle of their paddock?

I’ve built the stevenson screen, but it now needs a few coats of paint before It’s installed.