Many thanks to all those who replied to the above. The views are
generally that I should either use flooded cable, or protect it with
plastic conduit.
I am not keen on the plastic conduit idea, as it increases the cost
above what would be paid for flooded cable. Another consideration is
that we have no biting/gnawing underground animals here in ZL, so the
only issue is natural water ingress, and what happens if the cable gets
nicked, as it did in my case. By the way, I went out to my remote site
before work again today, and investigated the other cables. Previously
I had only looked at the damaged one, and assumed that they were all the
same. Not so. The other 7 are exhibiting the same low resistance as
they did when they were first buried over 3 years ago.
That being the case I have decided to replace the cables only as they
fail, and when I do, the new cable will be flooded. I have slight
issues with connectors, as my system is using BNC, and also with the
fact that I wind some turns of the coax around a toroid at the element
end, for common mode rejection. I'm not sure if flooded RG59 is
available. If not, I will use RG6 or RG 11 with F or N connectors, and
add a short tail for winding around the toroid, and connection to the
BNC sockets.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
73, Greg, ZL3IX
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