Today the fiber inspection microscope I ordered off eBay arrived! All in this was about $675 tax incl. The more I use fiber the more I realize that much of the fiber sent out by rental houses are not well maintained, and to reduce the risk of further contamination it is important to inspect and clean fiber ends before testing. In August Pete Erskine and I did a big corporate event that took 2 arenas for the audience of about 25,000. There was a lot of fiber involved, with the main comm and video runs from FOH to BS at each location being on a TAC 12 with ST connectors. Comms used 6 of those strands and video used 4 (I think). There were not a ton of spares in that 12 strand fiber. On our shop prep day Pete prepped the comm systems for each location and I inspected and cleaned fiber. I used Pete's electronic microscope and cleaning supplies because I did not own my own fiber maintenance kit. It became clear to me at that point that going forward it would be important that I carry the supplies that I would need to do my job. When you look at the surface of a fiber connection through a microscope it is very clear how clean it is or isn't. At that prep I quickly saw how dirty much of the fiber we had really was. I got the url from Pete for the microscope he had as I found it easy to use, and was reasonably priced.
This kit is from JDSU, I assume a Chinese supplier, through a dealer in CA. Delivery took about a week, and today it arrived. The kit includes the JDSU HP3-60 microscope and optical power meter as well as a remote microscope probe for inspecting bulkhead mounted connectors. Also included was a visual fault indicator, a set of adapters to a variety of fiber connector types, and a cleaning kit. It comes in a soft case.
This scope uses a video display rather than a direct view. I went for this much more expensive option over a $60-$70 direct view scope for safety reasons. I'de like to avoid looking into a live, lit up, fiber if possible. The scope input on the main body has a 400x magnification, the separate probe can be either 200x or 400x.
