It’s seldom easy being a minor player in a major market, especially when it’s the communications market dominated by such sluggers as Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner. These all-stars typically have the big-time budgets to hire the employees and purchase the equipment they need, while regional and local companies more often than not have to work with tighter resources that limit both their manpower and machine power.

Sometimes being smaller means you have to be a little more resourceful. Such was the case recently at Somerfield, a regional Triple Play communications provider (video, data, and voice services) of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), in Addison, Pennsylvania.

Sitting along Interstate 40 near the Maryland/West Virginia/Pennsylvania borderline, this rural town in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Somerset County is about 30 miles northeast of Morgantown, West Virginia, and some 60 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s an area traversed more by narrow roadways than wide-lane superhighways. But, like most of the country, it is also an area ripe and ready for access to fiber optic networks. Yet the lack of maneuverability and accessibility through the region’s terrain can present a big roadblock when using conventional equipment, such as truck-mounted pulleys or pulling wheels on bucket trucks, to install that fiber cable.

Mike Diehl, operations manager at Somerfield CATV, who joined the company 23 years ago, and today has overall responsibilities for all of the company’s construction, maintenance, and outside plant, has often tackled the region’s troublesome terrain.

“We’re just a small, private company, and we do our own construction in-house, generally,” Diehl explains. “We pull cable by truck, and even by hand when and where necessary. Sometimes you have to do traffic control because you’re out partially in the lane of traffic, and that takes away some of our manpower.”

But when Diehl’s work calendar pointed to some particularly difficult challenges on the horizon, challenges that couldn’t be easily handled by his small crew and large equipment, he decided it was time to call in some reinforcements.

What he needed, he decided, was something that would provide both the portability and the power to tackle the terrain, and not at the expense of his four-person workforce. The ideal tool would be a pulling unit that contained a power pack, and was on wheels for maximum portability. And a way to take-up pulling rope or mule tape was also on Diehl’s wish-list.

After doing his due diligence, Diehl selected the new SideWinder, a Pull & Assist Fiber Pulling Trailer, from General Machine Products (GMP) in Trevose, Pennsylvania. The SideWinder generally requires only one man for operation, and can be set up in less than five minutes.

Unique to this winch is a 32” diameter single capstan that provides a controlled force to the pulling rope or tape. The pulling tension, which is adjustable up to 1,100 lbs., is displayed on a dial gauge, allowing the operator to approximate the pull. The winch will stop pulling at the selected approximate tension without stopping the engine, thereby protecting the cable from being overloaded.

The capstan design also allows the winch to be placed at the mid-point of a section to assist in the pull, thus enabling longer pulls to be achieved. Although Somerfield CATV does mostly underground pulling, assignments sometimes call for aerial work. “We do a lot of underground pulling,” Diehl says, “where the midpoint is buried and you have to go vault-to-vault. But in aerial construction we’ve placed the winch at the midsection of a long pull to compensate for slack.”

The challenges Diehl and Somerset faced included several 1,700-foot pulls of fiber optic cable. “In one job, we had a 3-inch, schedule-40 conduit buried along the highway, and we were pulling 2 cables,” Diehl recalled. “We wanted to have the ability to pull future cables, so we pulled empty 1-inch ducts at the same time we were pulling the 2 cables, all tied together in 1 pull.”

In this case Diehl used a 2,800-lb (pull tension) flat mule tape, which won’t cut the conduit, something for which he says there is always concern. “We have to be careful with a lot of ropes we use,” Diehl explains, “especially when pulling in a PVC conduit. Rope can actually slice the conduit when you’re pulling in, particularly when you go around a curve or at any pressure point.
When you slice the conduit, you can damage the cable as well, and it defeats the purpose. We use the mule tape because it is strong and flat, and doesn’t cut the conduit.”

That pointed to another aspect of fiber pulling that was important to Somerfield. Like many companies, Somerfield normally recycles the pulling tape or rope for use in subsequent pulls. Now this aspect of Diehl’s job is easier. This winch coils the tape tightly and makes it easier to re-use. In fact, Diehl said that was one of the unique features that led him to select this particular solution, noting that, “if anybody else has a trailer that offers this feature, I didn’t see it.”

Ted Clemens and Frank Zaccone, both of General Machine Products Company (GMP), have more than 22 years of experience in Utility Tools and Equipment Sales and Marketing. Ted can be reached at 215.357.5500 ext. 277 or tclemens@GMPtools.com. Frank can be reached at 215.357.5500 ext. 244 or fzaccone@GMPtools.com. Mike Diehl of Somerfield CATV can be reached at 814.395.3084 or mdiehl@qcol.net.More information on the SideWinder is available by contacting GMP at 215.357.5500 or info@GMPtools.com.

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