Good comments, Paul. I'll keep the extended story in mind.

On Sat, 25 Aug 2007, Paul Keinanen wrote:

On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:09:47 -0400, Straydog wrote:



On Fri, 24 Aug 2007, Scott wrote:

Well, all humor aside, I stand by my original answer to BE CAREFUL. True, a
KV might not kill you, but if you start out being careless, when you progress
up to tubes like a 4-1000A, the B+ will most certainly kill you. The pile of
ashes on the floor will be proof enough

Again, humor aside, I pride myself on NOT having hit a KV...that takes more
skill than hitting it

Knights of Olde Times had scars to prove their courage, bravery, and
skills and slain dragons. ;-) (or foolheartiness?)

Then thee can speak of "experience." ;-)

And, once burned, you learn and remember better, too!!! :-)

Memory is wonderful: You recognize when you made that same mistake before!

;-)

And, of course, you get bragging rights if you can talk about a smoke test
where you really did get the smoke (yeah, I had one and that burnt rubber
stank, too).

At least in Europe AC/DC radio and television receivers were common,
in which you could have the 220 V mains directly in the chassis. You
learned quite quicly to check the polarity of the mains plug before
starting serving such equipment.

There was a golden rule of always keeping your left hand in your
pocket while working with your right hand inside a mains powered or
high voltage device. An AC/DC powered device could deliver quite a lot
current through the mains fuse and rectifier. If you touched some high
voltage part (possibly causing a cramp in your hand), the current
would not go through your hart and you would have the other hand
operational to pull the plug.
---
When testing a new power supply, I was sniffing around to detect any
overheating components, my nouse touched the mains transformer primary
and got an electric shock in my nouse. I did not notice anything
special after that, but driving a car immediately after that proved to
be difficult, since I really had to concentrate to stay in the lane.

So if you get an electric shock in the head, nouse or ears, please
avoid driving a car for a few hours, at least for the safety of others
using the road :-).

Paul OH3LWR