Dave Platt wrote:

The intent of the third prong on the power plug is to provide a safe
path from the equipment chassis, back to the power panel (where the
neutral and hot are bonded together). This ensures that if there's a
fault inside the equipment, and a "hot" wire touches the chassis, the
stray current will immediately flow back to the panel via this ground
connection (and likely cause a fuse to blow or a breaker to trip very
quickly). It ensures that you don't end up with a chassis which is
"hot", and isolated from ground... just waiting for somebody to touch
it, accidentally complete a path to ground via their body, and get
themselves mildly dead.

One of the reasons that Ground fault interrupters are around. If you
have a hundred feet or even more of neutral wire going back to that
panel, you can still get an appreciable current flowing through you
without tripping a breaker. I've had my tookus saved by one of those
GFCI things when a power tool failed in the manner you just described. I
felt the shock for just a fraction of a second, then it tripped.



the chassis, or sneak back into the microphone wiring and cause weird
squawking sounds when you transmit).

Ahh, that happens to me all the time even without RF on the mic! ;^)


- 73 de Mike N3LI -