Nice phone splice

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Rampage_Rick

Rampage_Rick

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British Columbia, Canada
Got a call about inoperative phones in one building. They've got a Nortel PBX with 50 odd phones in 5 buildings, 25-pair to each building.

Pull all the jumpers from both ends of the 25-pair and hook up my Dynatel 950. Half the pairs show 1300 feet, but a dozen pairs show 300 feet from one end, 1000 feet from the other. I'm thinking partial cable damage; perhaps it got nicked by an excavator. Move phones to good pairs and made plans to return in a few days.

A few phones drop out in only a day. Now I'm back with a wire tracer. Found a handhole buried under 6" of mulch. Find the 25-pair spliced with a BIX block. They did attempt to waterproof the splice by putting it inside a 12" PVC box, but that doesn't help much when the box fills with water...

IMG_20120417_101335.jpg

Out of interest, the pairs originally in use were around 8-16, which correllates to the green crud on the BIX block.

Couldn't get a suitable enclosure in time, so I reused the PVC box and reconnected everything with UY2 Scotchloks. Also suspended the box near the top of the handhole, rather than have it sit on the bottom.
 
I was young when I did it and didn't know any better. I put a GFCI outlet inside a box like this and plugged in some pumps for a water fountain.

There was no telling how long it worked before someone had to come back and fix my work.
 
Rampage_Rick said:
Now I'm back with a wire tracer. Found a handhole buried under 6" of mulch. Find the 25-pair spliced with a BIX block. They did attempt to waterproof the splice by putting it inside a 12" PVC box, but that doesn't help much when the box fills with water...

View attachment 6793
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Nice!
Water cooled conductors........at least deserves some marks for ingenuity........:p
 
I see that there's also no sheath bonding. I'm sure that part didn't help with your Dynatel's readings. Funny how everybody forgets about water when they come up with these contraptions. Personally, I'd use a 3M BB2X24 encapsulated splice kit and forget about it.
 
These cables didn't have a conductive mylar sheath, just the wax paper-like material to keep the gel in while they mould the jacket.

The Dynatel was spot on for distance. Besides the two leads connecting to a pair under test, it also has a ground lead connected to a nearby EGC. A test of a single pair actually gives 3 distance measurements: A-B, A-Ground, B-Ground. Obviously if only one conductor is open, it can foul the A-B reading, but not the other two.

I should add that the PVC box filled with water due to the extraneous holes added. In addtion to the two CGBs, it appears someone drilled a third hole and plugged it with some washers and a bolt. There were 2 mounting bolts for the BIX frame, but it appears they originally attempted to screw it to the box in a different location, and those screw holes weren't plugged.
 
hurk27 said:
A'hhh it's only phone wires we don't have to worry about no stinking water even if the ring voltage is 90 volts:blink:

NOT !!!

seal and encapsulate
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Nortel PBX phones operate at 24VDC with a 2-way digital carrier superimposed on the single pair, but same sentiment...

This place is was out in the boonies, so I'm not dropping in unless they request it. They had asked about possibly installing a cell-phone booster to improve service, so I might be going back for that which would give me an opportunity to further protect the splice (anyone know where I can buy a couple gallons of dielectric grease? :lol:)

Since I mentioned the booster: The nearest cell tower is 8.5 km away, and part of this property is in the shadow of a ridge. I'm looking at a Wilson repeater setup, with a pair of Yagi antennas aimed at the tower (800 & 1900 Mhz) an antenna combiner, a dual-band amplifier, and a dual-band panel antenna aimed in the dead zone. I'm hoping to make the signal dog-leg behind the ridge.
 
Rampage_Rick said:
Nortel PBX phones operate at 24VDC with a 2-way digital carrier superimposed on the single pair, but same sentiment...

This place is was out in the boonies, so I'm not dropping in unless they request it. They had asked about possibly installing a cell-phone booster to improve service, so I might be going back for that which would give me an opportunity to further protect the splice (anyone know where I can buy a couple gallons of dielectric grease? :lol:)

Since I mentioned the booster: The nearest cell tower is 8.5 km away, and part of this property is in the shadow of a ridge. I'm looking at a Wilson repeater setup, with a pair of Yagi antennas aimed at the tower (800 & 1900 Mhz) an antenna combiner, a dual-band amplifier, and a dual-band panel antenna aimed in the dead zone. I'm hoping to make the signal dog-leg behind the ridge.
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You do realize that cell frequency's are line of sight don't you? you don't "dog-leg" them around anything, if you can't achieve a high enough hight over the obstacle then your just spitting into the wind, you might try hitting another cell sight further away with a Yagi but with the low power in use right now it's a gamble if anything will work.

About the only repeaters I have had luck with was to get a cell signal inside a metal building which was only for the company's phones (ATT) but it wouldn't work for other carriers like Verzion or Nextell or Sprint for that matter, as each carrier uses a different band, so about the only thing you could possibly do is get a repeater on top of the ridge but that would require involvement of the FCC and or the carrier and they would only even think about this if there were enough subscribers in the affected area.

I should add that if they get any kind of cell signal even if it is a weak one, then you might be in some luck because of an unknown tower somewhere in line of sight, as you could scan with the Yagi till you zeroed in on it, or call the cell company and ask them or they might have a map of their towers on there web site?
 
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Here is a web link that will show you where most tower locations are, and you can use Goggle Earth to look at the elevations of the trerain in the area to determin if you have a chance to get a signal:

Cell Tower Locations

Just enter your zip code or drage the map and zoom in or out to look at the locations, it doesn't cover all towers.

Edited to link to a Canada cell tower site instead of a U.S.
Whoops.
 
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Will I get flogged for derailing my own thread? :roll:

I've got a map of all the cell towers in the province in Google Earth. Made it myself by doing a frequency search at Industry Canada (our version of the FCC) Picked a point in the middle of the province (Prince George) and searched for every frequency license within a 750km radius for each of the 3 primary cellular operators. Wound up with about 10,000 licenses, with a few duplicates where one carrier has several frequencies licensed at one location. Dumped it all into Excel, used =LEFT() and =RIGHT() to extract tower IDs and coordinates from the raw data, deleted duplicate entries based on tower IDs, and exported it as XML. A few edits in Notepad++ and it became KML for Google Earth with about 2,500 unique entries.

I do realize that cellular is line of sight, that's the issue here. The bulk of the property has coverage from a tower 5 miles away, but one area is a dead zone due to a mountain ridge blocking the tower. We're talking a 200 ft walk from decent reception to no reception. I'm hoping to use a Wilson repeater/amplifier at the apex of the dog-leg, which would be on the roof of a building just before the signal fades. From what I've read those Wilson repeater kits don't require a license, and we're only talking about a maximum of 5 phones in the dark zone at any given time.
 
Rampage_Rick said:
Will I get flogged for derailing my own thread? :roll:

I've got a map of all the cell towers in the province in Google Earth. Made it myself by doing a frequency search at Industry Canada (our version of the FCC) Picked a point in the middle of the province (Prince George) and searched for every frequency license within a 750km radius for each of the 3 primary cellular operators. Wound up with about 10,000 licenses, with a few duplicates where one carrier has several frequencies licensed at one location. Dumped it all into Excel, used =LEFT() and =RIGHT() to extract tower IDs and coordinates from the raw data, deleted duplicate entries based on tower IDs, and exported it as XML. A few edits in Notepad++ and it became KML for Google Earth with about 2,500 unique entries.

I do realize that cellular is line of sight, that's the issue here. The bulk of the property has coverage from a tower 5 miles away, but one area is a dead zone due to a mountain ridge blocking the tower. We're talking a 200 ft walk from decent reception to no reception. I'm hoping to use a Wilson repeater/amplifier at the apex of the dog-leg, which would be on the roof of a building just before the signal fades. From what I've read those Wilson repeater kits don't require a license, and we're only talking about a maximum of 5 phones in the dark zone at any given time.
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A'hh wasn't thinking last night, yes if you can put the repeater at the apex then it should work, I was just looking at some of the Wilson amps and that 75db one is very pricy, but you got to do what it takes and what they are willing to spend.
 
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