Joseph Gwinn wrote:

In article ,
Martin Eastburn wrote:

They used to do precision resistance from each end and determine
the break point.

It has been 40 years or so for me to hear the words - Varly / Yarly or
something like that.

It's "Varley": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._F._Varley.

If I recall from an old AT&T publication, the trick was to measure DC
resistance to the short from both ends of the cable, plus end-to-end
resistance of the wires, gathering enough information to solve for
distance to the cross, despite not knowing the actual resistance of the
cross (not all are zero ohms).


Any DC in the ground path can upset the calculations, too. BTDT, had
to dig up more wire to find it.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.