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Rant: the 'finger tight' thing on coax fittings is costing us callbacks
I have been doing installs in the Cedar Rapids area for 9 years and I keep running into the same thing with newer techs on my crew. They hand twist the F connector on until it feels snug and call it done, then the customer calls back two weeks later with pixelation on the upper channels. Here is why that bugs me. Finger tight on a coax fitting is not tight at all, it is just barely seated, and any little bump or temp change lets moisture work its way in. I started carrying a small 7/16 wrench in my pouch 4 years ago and my trouble calls dropped by more than half. Last Tuesday I pulled a connector off a guy's splitter that a helper put on with his fingers, and I could turn it another full turn and a half before it was snug. What really gets me is when they blame the drop or the tap instead of their own hands. Does anybody here have a way to drill this into new guys that sticks, or do you just let them learn it the hard way like I did?
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pat14d ago
Man, finger tight works fine if you actually get it tight with your fingers. The real problem is techs who barely spin it on and call that finger tight. A 7/16 wrench is overkill for most of these fittings, and half the callbacks I see are from cracked threads where somebody cranked it down too hard.
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