CABL Forum - Re: sweep classes

I would recommend as others have stated. Find a contractor who will let you do some work for them. If you are a good splicer and a hard worker you will find one who is willing to teach you. You will probably have to do there end of lines and re-splice the locations that they find, but if you truly understand how rf works, It should not take long. By starting out on end of lines you learn quickly what crappy splicing will do. Your troubleshooting will not cause to many customers to suffer and you can teach yourself. You will see what it is supposed to look like when it is good. After a little while, when you are comfortable with the meter you can start hanging with them as they do amp's. You will already understand what the graph means from looking at it so many times, and asking many questions. Then when your ready they will let you hit a few le's. You will learn about carrier to noise, hum, signal to noise, Ber, Mer, and the list goes on and on.
It really depends on the person, your previous experience, your understanding of equipment and cable response and the desire you have to learn the trade as to how long it takes to be a good sweep tech.
Now that is how I recommend you go about becoming a sweep tech. Or you could do as many others have, Buy a meter, get a truck, a little hammer(anything will do), some black tape, some aluminum foil, learn function 6 and function 2 and your ready to roll.
If you are considering a change in career path I think you should know that sweep is not what it used to be. Now they hire any hack that can operate a torch and they call them splicers. They let them hack and hack to get the numbers. They justify it by keeping there retainer. They know that they are going to hire guys to sweep it and they will fix whatever is wrong. Then they cut the price of sweep to the bone, they expect you to re-splice and clean up all the crap that the hacks made, They give you a spec that is totally unrealistic. They design the system and never give a thought to passive and active response. They are usually about out of parts. They ALWAYS have some idiot running the job who has know idea about what is really happening, but there uncle or dad or brothers best friend taught them the buttons on the meter and they think they know what sweep is. They usually have no spine so they allow the mso to bully them as they get lost in the first 5 mins of conversation that has to do with anything technical which ends up making the whole group look like a bunch of idiots. They are usually threatened by a good sweep tech so they try to keep those guys away and only let the inferior techs around any mso technicians or management which also makes the whole group look like idiots.
Oh yea they want to pay you .08 a foot on a good job. Then they will expect you to mitigate the node once you are done with a spec that only a cheater can do as the drops are usually as old as the sweep tech sweeping. They will give you all the crap nodes and keep the gravy for the in-house prime techs, (usually the project managers son or nephew. Or somewhat similar.)
I hate to sound so negative, but you should know what is out there.
Now they are all moving to 1 gig, usually through the same equipment that some hack hacked a few years ago and some chump with a sda 5000 who new the function 6 all too well swept. Now they will expect you to make it tight as it was just swept to 750 a few years ago. The difference between 750 mhz and 1 gig is huge.
What will pass at 750 wont even be close at 1 gig. Pins just a little to long/ too short, proper torque of the connectors, again the list goes on and on.
If your lucky they will have done node reductions so now your node will consist of a few thousand feet, usually full of cable that a plummer spliced. It will take you a half a day to get the node optimized, as usually you cant reach anybody who can be there when you need them. Most likely they will be doing some form of head end work, or just have an unstable head end, and you cant keep a good reference so you can expect to make 5 or 6 trips back to the node to re-reference. ( they will gig you on your book because of the discrepancy from beginning to end changes)
Then if you are lucky you might get to sweep a little plant and a good day will end up being 3000 ft, because if you do finish your first node the most you will get at your second is it set up. By then your so fed up you will say fk it. The days of 10000 plus feet are all but gone. Ahhh Ok SO I kind of went off and got a little lost here sorry man.
Maybe I was just unlucky my last few years of sweeping in the states. It has been a few years and maybe things have changed. Maybe now all the splicers have developed pride in there work, maybe the MSO'S really do desire quality work from everybody instead of the last poor guy to go thru it. Maybe they see that it takes a lot of hard work and education to properly align there system. Maybe just maybe the sky is purple and my eyes are just messed up haha. ahh anyway I am off to play some online poker, sorry for the rant. Good luck Bro.

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Re: sweep classes