Shoutout to the customer in Springfield who called me out on my coax terminations

Last month, a retired telecom engineer watched me work and said, 'Son, you're leaving a quarter inch of braid exposed, that's asking for noise.' I'd been doing it that way for years. Now I strip it to exactly 3/16 inch and my signal meter readings are way cleaner. Anyone else get a piece of advice that fixed a bad habit you didn't even know you had?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jenny19d agoMost Upvoted

That point from lisar14 about creating future problems is spot on. It's not just about fixing your own work, it's about the bad habits you might be teaching the next guy. Those small mistakes get passed down like bad wiring.

reese_bell19d ago

Yeah, I read an article once that called those little oversights "time bomb fixes." They work fine for now but cause issues down the road that someone else has to solve. It really connects with what @the_jenny said about passing down bad habits. You don't know your method is a problem until you see the right way side by side. That retired engineer saved you from a lot of future callback headaches. Those small details make a huge difference in quality.

lisar1419d ago

That's the best kind of lesson, when someone with real experience spots the small detail you've been missing. It's so easy to get stuck in your own way of doing things and just assume it's fine because it works. A little bit of exposed braid seems harmless until you see the cleaner signal on the meter. It makes you wonder what other small habits are holding back your work. Those old timers have seen all the problems we're just creating for ourselves.