Pro tip: the trick a 30 year vet in Bakersfield gave me for finding a bad drop without climbing the pole
About 6 months ago I was stuck on a service call in Bakersfield where the modem would sync fine in the morning and drop out by 2pm every single day. I had already swapped the modem twice and replaced the fittings at the ground block, and I was about to eat the cost of a bucket truck when an old installer named Ray walked over and asked if I had listened to the line at the tap. He had me hook my meter up at the ground block and set it to tone, then go back to the pedestal and clip onto the same pair. Turned out the drop had water in it about 40 feet up near the house, and the sun was heating the jacket enough to shift the fault. I never would have caught it from the pole side because the readings looked fine up there. Cost me 20 minutes with a meter instead of a 2 hour truck rollout, and the customer stopped calling in. Ray retired last spring but that one habit stuck with me. Anyone else run into a drop that only fails when the sun hits it?