this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

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Serious question.

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[โ€“] teft@lemmy.world 42 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Fluke makes a bunch of tone generators and circuit finders that you can use to figure out which line you need to work on. I assume linesmen have something similar for their more robust needs.

[โ€“] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 20 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Power linemen have phasing sticks to determine which phase is which.

Datacom wires are, to start, much lower on the pole than power cables, and have markings on the cable jacket to determine what the cable actually is (fiber, coax, tel, etc). Beyond that, there is usually some tagging at each service point.