For sealing joints in the rain, try self amalgamating tape. It is
usually black with a paper, or plastic, separator to stop it forming a
self amalgamated blob.
As you apply it you remove the paper/plastic separator, pull it
slightly so that it stretches like an elastic band and wrap it around
the connector or what ever you want to keep together. The tape then
sticks to itself and forms a water proof joint.
I've seen two sorts of this tape, one I call "dry" which is clean to
use, the other I call "sticky" which has a layer of what looks like
mastic on it and a hard outer shell. The latter was used by cable
jointers when I worked as an engineer in a distribution company.
The other useful form of tape is Deso, or Silglass, this is a horrible
green colour, which looks like several lengths of hairy string covered
in a very sticky green paste. It makes a mess of your hands, so I
tend to wear kitchen gloves when using this stuff but it is
waterproof. In the sun it will eventually dry out and become brittle,
but it does keep the water out for quite a while. I've also seen this
stuff used as temporary repairs on canoes and fibreglass boats.
Before they were outlawed, we used to make temporary pot ends (ends of
LV cables on distribution systems) using ordinary electrical tape as
insulation between the phases and wrapped in Denso, then bury the
joint. The idea was to go back the next day and replace it with a
proper joint. You can guess what happened sometimes! PME earthing
and the development of simple resin pack joints meant that the
temporary end joint was no longer used. Still seemed to get through a
few rolls of Denso, one way or another though.... HI!
All these tapes are very useful in waterproofing antenna joints and
ends of coax cables. Although what their performance as RF insulators
is I don't know. Mind you, water ingress is a bad thing for RF
anyway.
Cheers de Dave (G0DJA)
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