Sorry, I answered the wrong question. Hope you found it interesting.

=============================

"Reg Edwards" wrote -

The place was Hong Kong.

It was around Xmas, 1945.

I was alone in the lab.

Working on a set of airborne radar equipment strewn around the workbench.

The scanner was not rotating, just pointing out of the open window, past a
Royal Navy cruiser moored in the harbour about a mile away and onwards to
Victoria City with the island's mountainous peaks in the background. All
displayed strong echos on the PPI on its 10-mile range.

As indicated on the PPI there was something intermittent.

I suspected a poor coaxial cable connection.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Forgetting the equipment was still switched on I unscrewed one of the many
coaxial connectors and Pye plugs.

To clear out any foreign bodies I inserted the tip of by my right
forefinger
into the vacant socket.

Now that particular socket was power output from the modulator unit on its
way to the transmitter unit. The transmitter was a 50 Kilowatt magnetron
which required unpteen thousand volts, pulsed at several hundred times
persecond with a one microsecond pulse width.

How long I lay on the floor I do not know. Probably only a few seconds.

I trembled all over which passed off after a few minutes. Apart from a
white
burn on the afore-mentioned fingertip the after-effects were
psychological - it took several days to pluck up courage just to
re-enter
the lab when I had difficulty looking in the direction of the offending
plug
and socket.
---
Reg, G4FGQ

The place was the same lab in Hong Kong.

There was a chinese lady who came in each day to sweep the floor and remove
the EF50 valves, etc, which had been replaced because of low cathode
emission.

It was my habit to point the radar scanner into the room, stand in the beam
and quickly put put a neon lamp into my mouth. The lamp always lit up
brightly.

Whenever I did this the lady used to run out of the room terrified at the
magic sight.

Just the sort of trick a 21-year-old RAF radar mechanic would play.

Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the Germans,
that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar mechanics had not
reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.
---
Reg

Remember an old article in popular electronic, back from 1960's,

young boy wanted to help his girl nextdoor with a wart on her hand,
bright as he was, he thought he could use the hv from his pops hf rig
to burn off said wart.... well, she let out this scream that almost
broke the sound barrier and he got his butt wacked big time.

The wart did get removed !

j


Paul wrote:

Hi all,

Anyone got any high-current/low-voltage horror stories they'd care to
share? You know; where your messin' about with a car battery or
something like that and forget to take your watch off or whatever.

p.
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:37:32 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the Germans,
that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar mechanics had not
reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.

Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.

Behold, Paul Burridge signalled from keyed 4-1000A filament:

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:37:32 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the
Germans, that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar
mechanics had not reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.

Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)

You mean his widow wouldda been rich ;-)

--
Gregg t3h g33k
"Ratings are for transistors....tubes have guidelines"
http://geek.scorpiorising.ca

The time was 1952 or 1953. I had a roving job. Indeed I've nearly always
had a roving job. You meet people.

The place was Gretna Green, just a few hundred yards from the well-known
black-smith's forge and its famous marriage-ceremony anvil.

I was working with a colleage in a normally unstaffed telephone repeater
station. The job was capacitance-rebalancing of the multi-pair trunk carrier
cables which ran through the place.

The test leads were very flexible twin-screened cables which kept getting in
the way of the portable test equipment, on a collapsible table, and the two
operators. Difficult to read the dB meters.

So to ease the accommodation problem the test cables were tossed up and over
a pair of substantial bars, up near the ceiling, which could have been part
of the station's equipment racks.

Unfortunately, the insulation over the screening braid was worn at one point
and the bars turned out to be the main copper 50-volt bus-bars from the
battery room. Work continued in silence until suddenly there was a loud
bang, like a cannon shot.

The main fuse from the station's batteries had blown. The station stopped
working. England was disconnected from Scotland at a time when the Cold War
had started.

There was a glass-fronted fusebox containing a lot of cardboard-cased fuses.
The idea was for fuses which had blown to indicate themselves by charred
cardboard. But none were indicated although spare fuses were available. One
catastophy after another. But in any case neither my colleage or I was
familiar with station maintenance procedures.

We had visions of severe disciplinery action being taken. And I had brought
with me a set of fishing rods. Indeed, I had obtained after much arguing
temporary exclusive membership of Gretna Green fishing club at the then
extortionate fee of 2 shillings and sixpence.

But then our luck changed. 10 minutes later the local maintenance man walked
in. Purely by chance he had come in to make himself a cup of tea (facilities
were available) whereas he should have been doing something else in the
English town of Carlisle, 12 miles away. We were of senior rank. He fixed
the fuse and we never heard any more about the serious incident.

In the evenings I went fishing for trout by bright moonlight while my
colleage, a much older fellow than I, took my wife (who had come to join me
for a week) to the local Gretna cinema. He bought her icecream in the back
row. And I made friends with the female cook at the hotel and had trout and
butter for the first course at breakfast.

The next few jobs took me further into the wilds of Bonnie Scotland where
there was nothing to do except to gamble and play cards in the evenings. I
always lost. Even to the extent of losing my ex-army camp bed and having to
sleep on the hard wooden blocks of the repeater station floor. Myxamatosis
raged amongst the poor Scottish rabbit population.

It is only relatively recently, in my old age, have I returned to such happy
days. I have just opened a bottle of Sierra Valley, Californian white wine
for a night-cap. Diplomatic relations are now back to normal. I expect no
more irritable invitations to tea parties in Boston.
----
Yours, Reg, G4FGQ

"Paul Burridge" wrote

Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)

==============================

Paul,

I could have been even richer if I'd charged for all those computer
programs. But I have been much happier just by producing them instead of
setting up a waste-of-my-time sales and marketing organisation. But it's a
fact I never realised at the outset how popular they would become. I was
under the impression I was a late-comer to the field. But it seems I was
not. I was perhaps the originator of this type of program.

And I am confiding in you, even now, only because I am half-way down a
bottle of Californian medium-sweet white. Must keep international relations
in good order.
---
Yours, Reg, Amateur radio station G4FGQ

In 1982, I was about 20 I guess and working for Dentron Radio as a tech. For
no other reason than being careless, as I was normally on high alert when
working on the amps, I discharged a fully charged bank of filtercaps in a
Clipperton L from the left hand to the right.

I had tunnel vision for a couple seconds, fell to the ground as co-workers
rushed to my side. Short of breath and dizzy I began to sweat profusely. I
was ill for about a half hour then both arms began to ache as if I had been
pummeled with a baseball bat.

I have been zapped a few times since then but never ever will I allow IT to
flow across my chest again, that event scared the hell out of me and I was a
strapping young lad in good shape. Today the same hit would kill me, I'm
sure of it.

This could also explain my devout interest in QRP today!

Tim

Paul Burridge wrote:
Hi all,

Anyone got any high-current/low-voltage horror stories they'd care to
share? You know; where your messin' about with a car battery or
something like that and forget to take your watch off or whatever.

p.

This dates thirty years back: I was about ten years old. My father did
occasionally charge car batteries in the basement of our house. The
output of the charger was short cable with a broken cigarette lighter
plug. He did connect the battery to be charged with a pair of jumper
cables connected to it.
I was doing something in the room, when there was a big spark and some
smoke started to appear. I immediately disconnected the charger from the
mains as he explained to us that this was all we had to do to remove all
electricity from a device. I then went to search for him to tell him
what happened. When we came back the room was full of smoke and all what
was left of the jumper cables was some melted plastic. The copper was
all gone !

Markus

Paul Burridge wrote:
Hi all,

Anyone got any high-current/low-voltage horror stories they'd care to
share? You know; where your messin' about with a car battery or
something like that and forget to take your watch off or whatever.

p.

When I graduated from highschool, 1967, I started work for a company
called Standard Plastic Products. What we really did was make those
plastic and cardboard Barbie cases. These were heat sealed with
RF Energy. Lots of it.

The work area had about 50 sealing machines. These units were Class-C
RF oscillators and ranged from 25 to 60 KW. Yes, that is Kilo Watts.
Each unit had a large ceramic tube that had a base of around 6 - 8
inches in diameter. The larger units had tubes with large heat sink
hats which required a chimney to remove the heat. The RF energy was
applied to two copper platens that performed the sealing.

My job, along with three other techs, was to keep these machines
working. The most common problem with these things was blowing fuses,
dirty coupling capacitor clips, and some pretty spectacular blowouts
on the platens when the material got too thin.

The real problem was that, you had to reach into the units from the
back to get to the fuses or the coupling caps. The units had
power interlocks, so you couldn't activate with the back open
This was suppose to disable all power, remove the plate voltage,
and allow any charge to bleed off. But there were a few units where
the bleeder circuits did not work properly. This usually left a few
thousand volts on the plates of the tubes. You learned real quickly
to grip your adjustable wrench with your cardboard fuse pullers and
short the plate to ground. It was a heck of a blast and after 2 or
3 times, the unit was safe to work on.

Although I never heard of anyone actually comming in contact with
the voltage, because we were always on our toes, but I am sure that
it would have done some damage. I doubt the government would let
them get away with something like that now.

And you want to talk about QRM, these things oscillated around 27 MHz.

--
Martin E. Meserve

http://www.k7mem.150m.com