The crimping habit I had backwards for 4 years

Been doing residential installs around Tulsa for a while now. Always crimped my RG6 connectors with the shield folded back over the jacket. Looked clean, passed my own signal tests. Then a buddy from the union came on a ride-along and pointed out I had it totally wrong. He showed me the specs, shield should sit flat against the dielectric, not folded. I redid a drop that was having intermittent issues at a house on 41st street and the noise floor dropped like 6 dB. Turns out I was creating micro-shorts with the folded braid touching the center pin on tight bends. That was the cause of half my callbacks for bad picture quality. Never read the manufacturer sheet past the torque spec. Anyone else pick up a bad habit early that stuck around way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

rubyk261mo ago

My buddy who does commercial AV work out in Owasso had this same thing happen, only he learned it in reverse. He spent like 3 years folding the shield flat and always had these weird ghosting issues on long runs. Then he watched a factory rep do a demo at a supply house and realized he was supposed to fold it back. He felt like an idiot because he'd been doing it the opposite way the whole time, but he never had callbacks because his terminations were clean either way. He said the real kicker was when he went back and checked his old jobs, like half of them had the braid poking through the dielectric on tight bends. Now he swears by reading the full spec sheet before trying any new connector, but I still catch him double checking his work with a magnifier sometimes.

the_wesley29d ago

That magnifier habit hits different when you've been burned before.