[ internet ] Back in the world, again

So, after 2 days without internet ( did ya' miss me?   ) the chaps from Habland came round this afternoon.
My set up is similar to lots of people's on the campo. A couple of small black boxes in the house that feeds a cable which goes to a small dish pointed at some other lucky Handland customer. The larger of the 2 boxes has 3 lights along one edge. All three are lit when things are all working properly: internet and phone. 2 lights means it's all gone "dark": and you're out of touch.
Usually when it all goes pear-shaped, things return to normal after a few minutes - or a few hours. However, for me I was getting a little fidgety after a day. Especially as other "Hablanders" were not experiencing any problems. It must just be me, then.

Anyway, long story short. It turned out that the aerial cable down from the top of my cave house had developed a split in the insulation at the point where it takes a sharp turn inwards, towards the house. Since the cable was running down the front wall of the house, it was exactly where the rain runs down the very same wall. It appeared that some water had got in and zapped ( technical term ) the wires inside that carry power up to the dish. This was evidenced by a couple of burned pins on the connector, that supplied the Power over Ethernet to the transmitter on the dish. It also explained why the series of LEDs on the Nanobridge that sits in the dish (where the LNB would be, if it were a satellite receiver) weren't showing any signal - the burned pins weren't letting the leccy through.

So the singed connector was cut off and a new one crimped in its place. An inspection of the cable run showed one place where the outer insulation had what looked like bite marks on it (wasn't me: honest) so that got a few layers of self-amalgamating black tape from the Habland engineer. I've since used a small piece of electrical conduit to protect the place where the split is, and used that to increase the radius of curvature on the bend. It also has an overhang on the curve, to that rainwater will drip off, rather than run along it. Finally I gave the inside of the conduit a good dose of squirty-foam, to seal it against any rain trying to get in.

Moral of the story. It's sometimes worth having a look at your outside cables (the Habland installation has been there for just less than a year) for cracks, teeth marks, splits and water ingress. Pay particular attention to any places where cables are stressed, such as on sharp bends.