A spool of fiber like a launch cable, connected to the far-end panel of the link under test. Without it, the last connector sits at the very end of the trace with no fiber behind it, so the OTDR sees the reflection but cannot measure its loss. With launch and receive cables both in place, the OTDR measures the whole link including both end connectors.
Leave the receive cable on panel 2 at the far end, I'll shoot all 48 from here and then we swap ends.
Also heard as
- tail cord
- tail cable
- receive fiber
Do not mix it up with
- Launch cable: The launch cable sits between the OTDR and the near end; the receive cable sits past the far end.
Related terms
Launch cable
A long reference fiber placed between the OTDR and the cable under test so the first connector can be measured.
OTDR
Optical Time Domain Reflectometer: a tester that maps a fiber's loss and events by timing light reflected back along it.
Bidirectional averaging
Testing a fiber with an OTDR from both ends and averaging the results to get true splice losses.
Trace
The graph an OTDR produces, plotting returned power in dB against distance along the fiber.