atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring A new one.

From the "Just when you thought you'd seen it all" department.

I was called to a renovated mansion because several of the telephone jacks were dead, following some work by the "Master Electrician."

It seems that he needed to move some telephone wires out of the way of other work, and reroute them. This involved splicing them and piecing them out so that they would reach the interface.

Upon examination by me, a lowly "restricted electrician" the cause of the problem became apparent.

Scotchloks come in many flavors. Please refer to:

Scotchloks

The "Master Electrician" had used UCC (Capping and Clearing) Scotchloks to make the splices, which were then hidden up and above the sheetrock ceiling. Use of the open meter, (it read zip, basically) and then the hotset, mouse, and the 147 made the search easier. The tag tone stopped abruptly in the area above the electrical panel. It was only after opening the ceiling that the cause was determined to be the UCC's.

"Hey, dey was Scotchloks, wasn't dey? Dey shoulda woiked!"


I just thought I would add this to the general trouble-shooting experience, in the event that some of you folks run into a similar situation.

What exactly do those Scotchloks do? Never heard of capping and clearing.
Also what is a 'hotset, mouse, and the 147'?
FWIW, I use the UR or UR2 connectors

clear and cap is a term for keeping the cable ends from getting into trouble. Just nothing no teeth in them only for keeping the pairs out of trouble.

I've seen UCC's up for sale on e-bay many times and have always wondered how much longer it was going to be before this happened. Thanks for the story!

Sorry, I typed but forgot to engage the Mark VI Universal Translator.

In the splicing world, when energized pairs are dead-ended in a splice case, in order to protect them from moisture and from banging around and causing troubles, one UCC is squeezed on each pair. The UCC has no metallic parts, therefore no splicing takes place. One UCC per pair, and voila, the pair end is protected.

The hotset is a 600 Vdc breakdown tool that is used variously to weld a high resistance S/C or to break one open. It can also send "trace" tone, into a S/C'ed pair, and the tone can be heard in a headset plugged into the 147B amplifier, as the induction coil is moved along the outside of the cable. When the tone decreases markedly, that's where the S/C is.

You might have seen telco employees walking along a road with a long pole, with a wire plugged into a small amplifier with a headset. That's called a mouse-on-a-stick, and allows the splicer to find the S/C in an aerial cable.

The hotset can also be used to send "tag" tone, which is sent regardless of the pair's condition. It is a strong signal that can be heard even from buried cable, or from wire inside a wall.

Jeff, "S/C" = short or crossed in case you were wondering. Mus be sumpin wrong with that universal translator.

One might ask: Why would a live pair need to be dead-ended?

Let's take a typical residential street that has a 200 pair aerial cable running down the street on poles. At each pole, a 10 pair terminal is placed and the appropriate pairs are tapped, but not cut. There might only be a couple of houses fed from a particular terminal, but the remaining pairs are there for future use. All 200 pairs run through to the end of the cable run. At the end, all pairs must be dead-ended in some way to prevent them from touching each other or a ground and causing troubles two blocks down the street. Either UCC's or an empty 710/MS2 connector are used for this purpose. There are/were some other forms of dead-end devices, but the ones mentioned here are the most common nowadays.

Then one might ask: Why would the pairs be tapped instead of cut?

To maintain flexibility. Let's say that only two customers are working out of the terminal at 5408 Spring St. and all of the pairs in the terminal at 6102 Spring St. are used up. They can change or expand the terminal to use the same pairs that are at 5408. True, the pairs will be working at both places, but using this "express" method leaves all pairs available to be re-worked to suit future needs.

There's another reason for this. Cable is cheaper than paying for splicers to taper the cable down each time the pairs are used to a smaller cable size. Not to mention the reduction of cable pairs that are actually cut. Not cut = lower maintenance costs.

Arthur, I still love your original post. You have no idea how many times that I have asked myself the question whenever I see UCC's for sale anywhere. They appear to be "less expensive" UY's. The all-red color should be an indication to STOP!

Imagine the chastising we would receive from the sparkies for using red wire nuts instead of purple ones?

You think the sellers on ebay actually know what they are?

-Hal

So basically you are just capping off an unused pair, so the next guy knows it's not connected to anything...
I didn't know you guys still use the hotset aka breakdown meter. I thought those were a little too dangerous
PS I learn something every day!

Our telco got some new-fangled device about 20 years ago and basically outlawed the breakdown meters(I think it was the forerunner to the 3m Dynatel). I guess because it wreaked havoc on the connected equipment....go figure.

In our C.O. environment, we got killed if we used beanies or Scotchlocks, so I never was fond of them. I use the 709-SC/SD's for splicing becuase they take up less space and you can re-enter them.

I sucked it up and bought a Progressive wire finder back about 10 years ago. I don't think I've used it more than 3 times. It kinda sits on the shelf with the Transmission test set, the Impedance meter (old style vernier dial), and the digit grabbers.

Sometimes I actually get to use them :-)

Carl

Interesting...I thought those things would start fires and stuff cause they melted a pair together.