If you are running into eq's on the EOL's, the designer was trying to stretch out the runs to either keep inside of the specified cascade limit, or saving on putting in an LE or AMP with a terminating tap on it (money issue).
I live in southwest florida, and deal with the same environmental issues that you do, but to a more extreme degree (no pun intended
).I personally have found this issue when trying to sweep out to 860. I found that the discoloration on the pin connector pin caused a reaction which severly impaired the response, and made it roll of by at least 10 dB from about 600 MHz to 860. (It wasn't because of over-equalization). I basically had to go divide and conquer, and loosen and re-tighted the seizure screws to break thru the corrosion and get a solid metal to metal bond, until my sweep response came back up. You do have to resweep the previous active after doing that though since the you have changed the reponse characteristic of the run that you just re-tightened. It seemed to have caused reflections when the connection wasn't good. This brought my response right back up to where it needed to be. From then on out I had my techs use fine grit emory sponges to clean the discoloration/ corrosion off of the pins before they built their equipment. Haven't had one issue like that since we implemented that procedure, and have swept and certified many nodes since then.
Just another guy with another little bit of specific case knowledge to pass on. Hope it helps!
Jeff
