Welcome to the
The Sygma way of locating buried services, declassified.
Genny first. Locate, then avoid.
Released a piece at a time: the courses, the videos, the handbook, and Agent Hertz, who has read the lot and answers with the clip it came from.
- Things to watch and read
- 73Things to watch and read
- Subjects, six groups
- 31Subjects, six groups
- Handbook chapters
- 31Handbook chapters
Start with street lighting.The cheapest first move you can make.
Street lighting teaches you the cheapest first move. This is the rest of it. There are four ways to get a signal onto a line, they are not equal, and the order matters: connect if you can, clamp if you cannot, couple onto it if there is nothing to open, and induce only when everything else is exhausted. Each one has a condition that has to be met before it works at all, and knowing that condition is the difference between tracing a cable and tracing your own optimism.
- 01Why any of this matters1 min
- 02Watch: the four ways in4:04
- 03Direct connection, and what a good earth is2 min
- 04The signal clamp, and the two things that stop it working2 min
- 05Watch: the clamp, in the session4:02
- 06Induction, and why it comes last3 min
- 07Watch: what induction will and will not do5:45
- 08Check yourself7 questions
Fresh out ofthe ground.
How Long Should a Scan Take?
The question with no number in the answer. In a field you could almost set a time per mode. In a street the plans and the street decide it, because they tell you how many services there are to find and how many connections that means.
Advanced Signal Application: Connection, Clamp, Induction and Frequency Choice
The advanced session on getting a signal onto a line and keeping it there: the four ways in, which frequency to choose and why, aerial configurations, and the tracing techniques that follow from each.
CAT Manager: Getting the Data Off, and Telling Good Data From Bad
How to pull usage data off a CAT4 and what to do with it once you have it. Which models record what, how to read the raw data, and how a supervisor tells a proper scan from a box ticked.
It has readevery word in here.
Agent Hertz goes ahead and reports back. Every answer points at the clip and the timestamp it came from, so you can watch the bit that matters rather than take its word for it.
Live answer
On a concrete column I can’t get a connection. What now?
Wrap the lead around the column and use a capacitance technique. You are coupling the signal on rather than connecting to it. There is no tone change when you do this, so don’t stand there waiting for one.
[1] Direct Connection: Street Lighting, LV and Telecoms · from 1:47
Six waysinto the ground.
Before you dig
What has to happen before anyone opens the ground.
The kit
The Genny and the CAT themselves: what they do, and what they cannot do.
Applying a signal
The Genny half, the core of the Sygma method.
Finding services
The CAT half: locating, pinpointing, and knowing what the reading means.
Safe digging
Getting it out of the ground once you know where it is.
When it goes wrong
Investigation, coaching and the behaviours behind a strike.