Learned more about antenna cable grounding from a 70 year old crop duster pilot in a hangar in Bakersfield than any manual ever taught me.

He pointed at my messy coax run and said "son, that ain't gonna save you from a lightning strike, get that drip loop right" and I haven't screwed up a terminal block since, anyone else get handed a career-defining tip from some random old timer?

3 comments

3 Comments

harper_owens2mo ago

And that dielectric grease trick from @the_logan is basically the secret sauce every newbie should know, right up there with drip loops and not using zip ties tighter than a tourniquet. I learned the hard way that a little blob of that stuff goes further than a whole roll of weatherproof tape, especially when you're out in the field at 6am and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet.

the_logan2mo ago

My first proper coax run looked like a rat's nest after a bad breakup, so I can relate. A grizzled telecom guy once watched me struggle with a weatherproof connector and just handed me a tube of dielectric grease, saying "pretend it's sunscreen for your cables." That one tip saved me from more rusted connections than I care to count.

dylan2652d ago

Seen this same pattern play out a thousand times with other stuff too, not just cables. In my area we had an old timer who showed me how to fix a squeaky gate with bar soap instead of WD-40, and I still use that trick 15 years later. @the_logan's story about the dielectric grease is exactly that - some experienced person shares one weird little hack that makes everything click. It's like how my grandpa taught me to rub a dryer sheet on my socks to stop static, random but it works perfect. The whole world runs on these tiny old school tricks that nobody writes down in a manual.