TrakMate Heavy Duty Cat 5 Cable And Metal Cable Reel

[Wesley Tucker]

I got everything I need for a TrakMate . . . except a TrakMate. I'll just have to wait and see what Dan does in the next few weeks about a new and improved box.

In the meantime, I took Chris Novatny's advice and decided against the more common gray "telephone wire" and went ahead and got 1000 feet of stranded Cat 5 network cabling. It came in a box for $66.00 including shipping. Also, instead of the more common orange reel that comes from Home Depot, I heard something that Chris said and did a search on eBay. He had mentioned "air hose reel" and it struck a chord with me. The reels garages and workshops use to wind up compressed air hose.



Searching on eBay, I found one that was new with a "buy it now" price of $19.95 and it was designed to hold 100 feet of 3/8" air hose. I took a chance that it would be big enough for my cable and placed the order. Both came today:



The hose reel is all-metal and has a center port for allowing the hose to be connected to an air source while spinning freely. In other words, the end of the cable can stick out and it will spin with the reel just like on the orange reels. It also has a crank handle for reeling the cable back in. The drawback, though, is that this sucker is much heavier than our standard reel-cable combination. This cable and the metal reel combine for a weight of 35 pounds. That's heavy.



But, the good news is that 1000 feet of the Cat 5 cable fits on this reel with room to spare. No more worrying about the cable "falling off" the reel into the axle and getting all tangles and mangled. Plus, the heavier Cat 5 cable is less inclined to get tangled and mangled in the event of a mishap.

With shipping, I got this entire combination for $92.58. If you buy "everything but the tape switches" from Dan, then that's $300. This cable/reel plus a $150 TrakMate box would be $242. So it's a lot more for less.

[Pat Chewning]

Here's another suggestion for winding wire onto the reel:

Take your 1000' of wire and find the center (500' point, midpoint)

Start winding onto the reel at the 500' mark and wind two strands at once onto the cable.

Advantages: Takes 1/2 as long to wind/unwind. Allows excess cable to remain on reel for courses shorter than 1000'. Allows access to both ends of cable for testing.

Try it, you might like it.

-- Pat

[Wesley Tucker]

First of all, I love an opportunity to break out my power tools and fidget with gadgets. The one drawback to my new cable/reel combo is this reel is for mounting on the wall. To emulated the orange Home Depot reels, I needed a handle to hold it while walking down the hill and legs for it to stand on while reeling in the cable.

So I made some.



Just grab the yellow handle (a piece of an old aluminum-tube mop handle) and walk.



Flip it over when you're done reeling it out and sit it down, then grab the crank handle to reel it in.

All it took was a piece of scrap 2x4, two 4"x1/4" U-bolts to mount it (the only thing I bought at 75¢ a piece,) a couple of 2.5" wood screws to screw through the wood and mop handle to hold it in place . . . and a 10" chop saw, floor drill press, hand drill, 3/4" hole bit and MacDraw on your computer to make the plans so you don't have to do it twice.

Easy.