I wanted to fish some telephone wire (and later speaker wire for ceiling
speakers) over the suspended ceiling in the lower level of my house - about
25 or 30 feet. The clown that built the ceiling wired the supports at every
corner so the panels cannot be lifted in order to feed the wire through. I
had to cut a couple just to gain access. To feed the wires from one end to
the other was easily done using a 30' tape measure. I extended it out to the
opposite side of the room above the ceiling panels. It is just stiff enough
to hop over obstacles like wires and hangers, ducts, etc.. Once there, lock
the tape measure and set it down. Go to the other end and tape the wire to
the end tab of the measuring tape. Go back and reel it in - helps if someone
else is there to feed the wire. I suppose others have thought of this, but I
was patting my ego on the back the rest of the day for doing this.
-Gizmofiddler

"Ken Scharf" wrote in message
. ..
Every now and then a need for a tool not on hand occurs, or
a required part isn't available for a repair. Then the
proverbal light bulb appears over one's head (homage to
Edison no doubt). Today I was running some RG8/U into my
attic crawl space to access a conduit into my shack. I drilled
a hole into the roof overhang and pushed the cable into the
hole. As Murphy would have it, the end of the cable being pushed
into the hole was the end wound onto the core of the spool, so the
cable was very 'springy' resulting in it all bunching up right
at the hole inside the attic. When I climbed into the attic
I couldn't reach the cable, it was sitting in a coiled up bunch
at the wall. No way I was going to be able to crawl the distance
and reach out to grab the cable.

Now for the macgyverism ....
I found a 6 foot piece of left over 1/2 pvc pipe and a 3" U-bolt.
I attached the u bolt to the end of the pipe with electrical tape
and used the new tool to reach and hook the coax.

Ok, I'm sure we've all come up with these macgyverism's from time
to time. Anybody care to share their brainstorms...?