On Fri, 29 Dec 2017 01:30:15 -0500, Michael A Terrell
wrote:

Larry Jaques wrote:
Michael A Terrell wrote:

If you've ever worked around a tower that was struck by lightning,
you'll know first hand what that induced magnetic pulse can do to
unshielded circuits. I spent hours on cross country phone calls
arranging for replacement parts, and had one of the techs waiting at
the airport for them to arrive after losing audio on every satellite
delivered channel on a CATV system because o the manager's attitude
of, 'It's just audio, why waste money on shielded cable'? The $20
he saved caused us to spend over $1000 to repair.

Ya gotta love "upper" management, don't ya?


They hired an expert in RF system design from a college, since it was
their first 'Million Dollar Headend'. It looked like it was laid out by
a drunken teenager who had only seen an I-pad.

The room had it's own air conditioning, yet equipment was
overheating. The audio and video wiring was crap, and anything as
grounded, other than through their power cords or several hundred feet
of RG6/U, and then through 130 feet of tower.

I moved all the racks slightly, and some of the equipment
temperature dropped by over 40 degrees. Some of the moves were for the
improved grounding, while the others were done to improve airflow.

The 'man' who replaced the designer was even worse. He was the one
who hired me, and he bragged about all of the stupid things he'd done at
other CATV systems, including how many bucket trucks that he'd wrecked.
His name was 'Bliss', and he was an idiot. He would set the video levels
without terminating the waveform monitor. The Collins had 4 Volt
unterminated output, instead of the 1 volt terminated that was industry
standard. He insisted that Tektronix knew nothing about video test
equipment, even though 95% of all video waveform monitors were built by
them.

I also caught an overheating three phase power panel that he tried
to brush off as not important. That cost us a couple thousand dollars to
repair. The neutral was undersized for electronic loads, and the
harmonics had the wire too hot to touch. You could feel the heat, just
by walking past the panel.

He refused to replace the desiccant cartridges in the pressurization
system for the Heliax to the 5 meter dish. We ended up wit gallons of
green water inside that expense cable.

One of the "Here, hold my beer and watch this. I is a Injuneer!"
types, eh?


When they fired him for sexual harassment, they walked in a brand
new VP, with a new manager from our smallest systems. He ****ed me off
by telling me that "Any service company would be proud to have our
work", so I gave two weeks notice. I spent part of my last week
installing all new C-band microwave equipment, because Collins/Rockwell
would no longer service it, and none of those service companies would
touch it. I routinely rebuilt the Collins equipment in house for our
system, and other systems owned by United Video.

Good for you.

--
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark.

In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and
the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish
and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but
never have been able to reach.

The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real,
it is possible, it is yours.
-- Ayn Rand