"K3HVG" wrote in message
...


110VDC on ships, Oh yes! Partner and I repairing radar
on one such ship, bravely plugged in our trusty Weller
soldering gun and pulled the trigger. Nothing for a few
seconds, and then a little curl of smoke. When trigger
was released, it hissed, breathing fire and sparks out of
ALL
the air cooling vent slots. Throwing it on the deck and
stomping on it only aggravated the fireworks. Stone
faced Skipper calmly pulled plug from wall, and I think
he lost some admiration of our technical competence.
Old Chief Lynn, W7LTQ

Heh heh! Been there and done that. As the civilian
navigator on the USNS Keithly (a re-commissioned and
converted Navy cargo ship)in the late 60's, we had a
number of newly-graduated "scientists" on board. The
scientific and comms spaces had been converted via MG's
for 120/240VAC. The staterooms were still 110DC. I
shared a room with one such newby and, seeing that my
Norelco shaver worked just fine, he plugged in his early
style portable record player/radio/amp. When turned on,
the requisite curl of smoke and bad odor emanated, ending
the machine's life, early. I probably would not have
liked his music, anyway. The thing is, you really had to
force the plug into those DC sockets. As I recall,
they're not quite the same as standard two-blade ac plugs.

de K3HVG

My now very distant memory is that DC outlets had
either one prong perpendicular to the other or both
"horrizontal" where standard sockets are parallel and
"vertical". Occasionally, one sees sockets made to
accomodate either type of plug. I think 220V sockets also
had some variation of this pattern. Plugging 120V stuff into
220 will also get some interesting, although short lived,
results.


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL