I spent a couple of weeks with my crew members in the Nevada desert, about 50 miles north of Las Vegas. We were splicing fiber optic cable that was being installed along a new route of transmission lines headed north from a new substation. Plenty of water and sunblock in my truck.
We were in a 65 mile stretch of desert tortoise habitat, and were required to be guided by 'monitors'. They were field biologists who led the way at a pace of 10mph, and made sure we didn't run over any tortoises. Never saw a single one the two weeks I spent down there.
My guide's John Deer Gator broke down, and he was forced to guide me in on foot that afternoon. Keep in mind temperatures are in the low 100's. :)
These are the structures that we were working along. Lower cables are all transmission lines from the substation. The cables at the very top are fiber optic cables, known as optical ground wire.
Here's my crew members and boss arguing over which part goes where in the assembly of these special fiber optic splice enclosures.
Only got one done the whole first day. Once we figured out a system we were prepping, splicing, and hanging 4 a day.
Those are the two ends of different spans of cable that we'll splice together. The silver drum is the enclosure where the splices and stripped down fiber will go to protect it. They're called target enclosures. And I'm sure that's exactly what they'll end up being. The power company said they've been patching bullet holes on the structures like crazy, thanks to the locals.
This are the fiber optic's protective buffer tubes, blowing in the wind.
Interesting erosion on the hills.
Very dusty and windy along the right-of-ways.
Here is the behemoth bucket truck that the power company let us borrow. Our bucket truck lost its transmission on the way back down for week #2. Along side is my Ford & splicing camper.
The power company strings the cable from tower to tower, and every couple of miles will drop down two ends of it for us to butt-splice them together and keep the line going. Each of those two coils has about 90' of cable and weigh more than 75lbs.
View of the valley after climbing a monster hill.
Isolators are installed at every other splice location. Except for the actually splicing, all of the work done on this job was up in a bucket.
View of the line from the bucket.
We covered about 20 miles along the line, and have more than 50 to go. We just have to wait for them to string more cable along the lines, and they'll be calling us to come back in a couple of months. I'm sure this area is really nice in August.
