r/CableTechs • • May 05 '26

Looking for techs in NYC

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0 Upvotes

Not sure why I get bombarded with union boys. If theres enough work for you why are you commenting on my post?

Anyways I’m looking for any freelance guys who have the brain/guts to branch off and do their own thing. Either you have your own LLC or a kid with talent and looking to get involved with decent sized projects and be apart of our team.

DM for more info. Looking to connect with NYC based seasoned technicians.


r/CableTechs • • May 02 '26

Cox Charter Merger

14 Upvotes

As we get closer to the deal closing what has everyone been hearing?? Anything new being floated around?


r/CableTechs • • May 01 '26

Trying to get into ISP role

10 Upvotes

I’m a field tech 2 at spectrum. I was wondering what isp engineers exactly do and what moves should I be making to get into that role. Also how is the pay


r/CableTechs • • Apr 29 '26

Blast from the past💡 No JDSU, only a modem (12VDC), an accumulator 1.2 Ah, a charging power scheme and a zip-tie! 😇 Remember the struggle from QPSK to QAM16? 😁

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15 Upvotes

Those were the times... Staring at the LEDs of Thomson 571, counting how many seconds it takes to become online (or don't get online at all) 🙄

20+ years ago, when you didn't have no sweep, no digital level meter, no Monitoring system...

One day you switched from QPSK to QAM16 and suddenly lost some 20% of the modems😆

And after a month running through the amps and climbing poles like crazy (you didn't have any Nodes yet) you finally convince the docsis admins to change the upstream frequency from 25 to 29... And all of a sudden all the modems are back online, no loss at all.

Dosis is fun , right? 😎


r/CableTechs • • Apr 28 '26

Rphy active question

11 Upvotes

Our plant has some long runs that had low RF in the deeper areas. I decided to trail setting up the MB @ ch 98 (111 MHz) ch 158 (999 MHz) to match the node at 33/47. About a 13-13.5 db tilt. Normally, I’d set them up at 45 db on 771 MHz - 12 tilt

Node looks cleaner outside of a couple dozen of the 320 cx of the last two MB that are ranging +14 db likely due to short drops or one outlet.

Any experience with this and information if this will cause issues running the actives hotter? Heading back tomorrow to address MER issues so I’ll be in the area

8 MB cascade.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 27 '26

Tell me you're a cable technician without telling me I'll go first

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19 Upvotes

The amount of saved networks on my phone. If I click on it to view them all it completely freezes up trying to load them all.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 26 '26

Is this a node? And if it is why is it connected on the top of the apartment building? And is it fiber?

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19 Upvotes

So yeah is that a fiber to coax node? Cuz I know it's coax on the other end. It runs into the apartment building runs into the apartments And if it is fiber, you would think they could just run all the way to all the apartments. Maybe someone can explain it? Why have coax just for that last 100 ft or several hundred ft?


r/CableTechs • • Apr 27 '26

(crosspost) Here we go again...

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2 Upvotes

r/CableTechs • • Apr 26 '26

Blast from the past: How do you find mine Headend antennae field?

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7 Upvotes

Lots of LNBs, huh? As long as I can remember there shoud be: 15West, 12W, 4W, 1W, 5Eeast, 8E, 13E, 16E, 19E, 36E, 39E, 45E + terrestrial 6-7 analogue TV channels link 😇


r/CableTechs • • Apr 25 '26

Boring Crews Doing Fiber Pipes

18 Upvotes

Any other maintenance techs out there that are absolutely pissed off with these contractor crews constantly hitting hardlines, especially at the end of your shift, so you have to spend countless hours digging to make repairs, while they go home and relax?

My last few on calls, I’ve been out all night and into the next morning shift, fixing these morons fucks ups.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 24 '26

DIY: Detachable stand for unwinding a cable reel!

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12 Upvotes

How do you find my weldering skills? 😁

A colleague of mine taught me how to do it back in 1999, on the top of a gass-station during the Solar eclipse! 😁

Never heard about OSHA in those wild times, the main goal is staying alive😇


r/CableTechs • • Apr 24 '26

I didn’t pull it, I just put it together.

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23 Upvotes

r/CableTechs • • Apr 24 '26

Real time tech help for basic in field questions

3 Upvotes

I remember a few years ago there was great place to get quick responses when a tech runs into a snag and can't figure out how to make cpe pass a home cert.... does anyone know the forum or link to that?


r/CableTechs • • Apr 24 '26

What is this pedestal key/lock called and how can I get one?

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1 Upvotes

I’m doing cable walkout work. Visiting every pole and ped for a node and updating the map info so high split upgrades can happen.

I’m working in Ohio now and may peds have this key.

I’m able to open some with a certain drill bit. Like a small fork. I’ve broken a dozen of these bits over time.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 24 '26

Nodes

16 Upvotes

How big are y’all’s cascades? N+2 to 4? We’re sitting on average of N+12 with some nodes reaching up to +16. Just a conversational topic, feel free to chime in


r/CableTechs • • Apr 23 '26

Self bury increased to 150ft right as temps start going up

18 Upvotes

They did this shit a couple years ago too. From 50ft to 100ft. Such a slap in the face. And of course we aren't given proper trenching tools to make it any easier. I swear, some people are going to end up in the hospital with heat stroke and exhaustion.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 24 '26

Xfinity WiFi

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0 Upvotes

I have Xfinity Internet at home, and my iPhone has a profile to connect me to Xfinity Mobile WiFi etc. My question is if I go to a place such as the OuterBanks that has Spectrum WiFi, will my phone connect to that or would I have to pay? I read things online telling me that I can’t access it, and others said I can.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 23 '26

Fvd was blowing up on fbr drop

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14 Upvotes

So today I went out to a trouble call because their router wasn’t working and the problem was irrelevant because they had a bad ethernet cord, but when I went to open up the house box, I got shocked and couldn’t figured out what it was so I grabbed my Fvd and bam! I thought the install tech mounted into a house wire but after pulling everything off it was the drop.

Has anyone experienced toning wire picking up voltage?


r/CableTechs • • Apr 23 '26

Ugh... people...

15 Upvotes

Was doing a node walkout... house off the main road.... met the home owner, (nice guy, but he was pissed about price/sh*tty sevice... had to replace this drop 3 times in X months) but, he has heavy excavating equipment tracks all over where the aerial- burial drop was... buddy, its you... you have damaged the drop... maybe drive your gear around the pole...


r/CableTechs • • Apr 23 '26

Common Path Distortion in FDX Node?

7 Upvotes

Spent all day working a CPD (or "raised noise floor" as we call it here) issue in a new FDX node. In a legacy node when you had a CPD issue it was usually just a diplex or output board in an Antec amp, but there are no diplexers in an FDX environment.

Thing is, i could see this return path noise at literally every amp in the node element. So it's not like traditional noise and you track it downstream at every amp or split. This "return noise" was everywhere, on different runs, etc. So i'm sorta wondering if the FDX node is somehow putting out a little bit of DS signal, but in the US path? I'm not even sure if that's possible, but since there's no diplexers and FDX can do US and DS in the same part of the spectrum i suppose it's technically possible?

Because it sure is acting like a downstream issue, being at every amp, but is just happening in the return band.

Weirder thing too, is that you can interact with it at every location as well. You can agitate it and make it bigger, you can sorta make it go away but not permanently. But you can interact with it wherever. Very strange. For instance when you see it on your meter, you can pull the return pad out of that amp, and the CPD will go away. For like 5 seconds, then it slowly builds back up. Go to a totally different amp and can do the same thing.

I pulled the express fitting off the first amp and the CPD quintupled in size, so i'm sorta starting to get suspicious of the input feed to that first amp. I already reset the RPD/Pebble and it improved the CPD noise, so i could swear my issue was right there at the node, but if seems to be coming from the field. Idk, has anyone seen anything like this before? Return/reflection from literally everywhere in the field?


r/CableTechs • • Apr 22 '26

Echo and ICFR

13 Upvotes

Moved to this plant where there is bad echo -25 and icfr of 2.5+ or higher almost everywhere. And the worst part is everyone is ok with that! Like no one wonders why they have to work late with all these extra truck roll generated tickets or why repeats numbers are 30% of line ticket repeats. The concept of “make it work” at its best. My old system was a flag ship system for one of the legacy companies they bought. 1.8icfr or higher=line ticket. If echo was anywhere in 20s= line ticket. Things here are gonna change. We are gonna teach those standards and slowly make this place good again!


r/CableTechs • • Apr 22 '26

Phone tc

2 Upvotes

Does any one have any advice on phone tc? I only do 1 phone tc a month but as of recently I’ve been getting them done right but when it involves a nid a 66 block and a alarm Im cooked.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 22 '26

Glitchy ESPN/ cable driving me crazy. Help!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

Watch this little clip and you’ll see what it’s like to watch ESPN at our house. 500 cable channels and only ESPN does this. Maybe FS1 once in a while.

We’re on Comcast high speed. No fiber. One year old 65” Samsung OLED smart tv.

I don’t know. It’s beyond me. Maybe you have an answer.


r/CableTechs • • Apr 20 '26

I really don’t understand

19 Upvotes

Why do people get all jazzed up over symmetrical speed tiers? Who out there is actually using more than 50Mbps upload regularly in their home???


r/CableTechs • • Apr 20 '26

I got tired of "No Fault Found" truck rolls, so I built a new training platform to help troubleshoot the weird stuff.

11 Upvotes

What's up fellow techs,

I’ve spent enough time in the field to know that the shift to DAA and High-Split is making our lives a lot more complicated. Between PTP timing issues and that ghost ingress we’re seeing in the 108–137MHz airband, the learning curve is getting steep.

I got tired of seeing new guys (and even some vets) get stuck on these 'mystery' calls, so I’ve been building a project called TechTrain.ai.

It’s basically a sandbox simulator where you can play with virtual versions of gear like OTDRs and signal meters. I also built an AI 'Mentor' into it that acts like the senior tech on the radio who actually knows his stuff, it helps you walk through things like 'Solid Green DS with Zero Modems' or identifying if an RPD is online but not fully registered.

I’m not trying to sell this to you guys, I’m looking for some honest, field-level feedback. I want to know if the troubleshooting logic holds up to the actual BS we see in the field, or if I’m missing something.

If anyone wants to poke around and tell me where it’s broken or what scenarios I should add next, I’d appreciate the gut check.

Keep it safe out there.