Thought I was wasting time learning fiber optic terminations, turns out I was dead wrong

I used to think fiber optic was some overhyped marketing thing for avionics. Then last month a CRJ-200 came through with a bad fiber line between the cockpit display and the LRU, and my old coax crimping tricks did nothing. Spent 3 hours cleaning and re-terminating that single ST connector, and the system came right back up. Anyone else had to eat crow on fiber skills?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucasking29d ago

Yeah the first time I had to re-terminate a ST connector on an E190 starboard side display lag was a real wakeup call. Took me about 2.5 hours the first time because I was being too careful about the cleave and polish. The trick I learned is keep your cleaver blade clean and use a dash of isopropyl on the wipe cloth before the final polish step. It cuts down on the contamination that can kill your signal.

anderson.gavin28d ago

lucasking says "it kills your signal" but honestly I've seen guys get away with way worse terminations and the system still ran fine for years. I think people overstate how clean that fiber actually needs to be on old E190 avionics. Unless you're seeing actual flickering or dropouts I wouldn't stress the polish too much.