Warning: toning those coax ends wrong can cost you a truck roll

Spent 9 months toning RG6 with the probe tip touching the center pin directly, thought it was fine. Then a customer's modem kept dropping sync and a senior guy showed me I was shorting the shield against the connector body, which was causing noise. Anyone else figure out they'd been doing a basic step wrong for way too long?

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holly70914d ago

Three years ago I was torquing F connectors to 30 in-lbs on every drop because some ancient training sheet said so, and it took a weird intermittent issue on a brand new build to realize the spec for RG6 quad shield is actually 22 to 25. The senior guy who caught it just laughed and said the torque wrench was the problem all along, not the toning. That little difference caused enough micro-flexing on the center conductor to create a marginal connection that passed DC continuity but failed on high frequency. Honestly, half this trade is unlearning what someone showed you once and never questioned again.