ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Shutting off the electrician

To BugabooBren--

Sorry, the wilderness lodge thing won't work! DW and I go to a wildernss lodge in the Canadian Rockies, the place is 40 miles off pavement and 17 miles from the nearest road. It's either hike in, or heli in. We hike!

The place has a low-head hyrdo RE system, and the last couple of times, I've taken in a full complement of meters and gear to evaluate and tune up the system! It's the best of all worlds, to hike all day, eat a great meal, and then go to the root celler for an hour and do some testing!

It is interesting, though, when going through Canadian Customs, to tell them that all the test gear is not for work, it's for vacation!

Cliff

My father was an engineer for a poco essentially all of his life. I inherited (by genome and by nurture) an abiding interest in all things electrical.

I navigate by overhead lines. When I am driving I use high tension towers as a way to figure out where I am. My normal commute from work in I93 to I495. If I am deep in thought I have been known to forget to exit I93 at I495. I recognise my error by seeing unexpected towers.

When ever I go on vacation I take pictures of things electrical.

Turning me off from this would probably take 4160V

Thanks,

Not an electrician, but thanks to this board I know check out all the electrical systems that I see. I never really noticed them before.

However I was a facility manager and am now the safety guy, so now I cehck out everything! I have a particular fascination in looking at sprinkler systems. I was at a wedding and I spent most of my time checking out the sprinklers in the church.

One of my favorites was in the Burbank airport with a sign painted on the wall with 2 foot high letters saying Fire Extinguisher with an arrow pointing down and of course no fire extinguisher. I was so close to telling somone to put a fire extinguisher there.

I do have a habit at work of looking up and following the conduit and pipes up there. This started at my old job where the place was 450,000 square feet. They say at work that someone could run a hose on the floor and I would miss it. However if someone hangs some conduit crooked that I will see it.
Scott

Gotta put my two-cents worth:

1. Whenever we visit friends or see new homes a friend bought, the first place I head is down to the basement to check out the panel. Sad.

2. Last date night my wife & I had she caught me staring up at the ceiling. She said, "let me guess what you're looking at." Yup, I was looking at the exposed EMT between j-boxes, making sure they were supported correctly, etc.

3. Visiting another friend's farm, went into their pole shed, looked at the old Square D Fuse box from a distance with strange objects protruding from all sides. Walked up to it, opened the panel, noticed all the knockouts were removed, and corn cobs stuck in their places. One of the socket assemblies was missing, exposing the hot bus bar, and one corn cob was within an inch of it.

Like many of you said, we just can't seem to not notice the good work and bad work you see out there!

That would be the broadcast array of WPAT 930 AM, Clifton, NJ. The circular rings at the top of each tower are "capacitance hats", used for tuning each radiator to the proper frequency. By adjusting the signal phase fed to each tower, the radiation pattern of the signal can be altered. One of the towers also supports smaller antennas used for the stations FM operations. Pics of the array and some station history available at:
http://hawkins.pair.com/wpat.shtml

njwirenut:


Thank you! Clifton is within walking distance of where I live. I had searched the FCC database but couldn't quite figure out which station has that neat array.

I'm also not far from the WEVD 4-tower setup off of Route 3.

I was in awe the first time I saw the rotating antenna at Newark airport (radar, I presume).

Damn the architech who designed all open ceilings in stores. My wife just laughs when we go the the "Orange" store or Kroger or any other store with exposed electrical. I will admit that I have noticed interesting ways of installing and have used these ideas in my installations.

IMO,
You can't turn off from being an Electrician.
Look at it this way, even after a hard day of crawling around in some nasty crawl-space or pulling cables until the cows come home, we still like to get on the Net, to talk about, you guessed it, Electricity! .
This takes real dedication to the Trade, I reckon.

Ever catch yourself correcting the Electrical Department "pro" at the Box?

Asking DIY'rs "Why are you buying those? They don't go together"

or telling them "Don't waste your time and money buying those 39 cent receptacles!"

Before I got married (hell, before I was "officially" dating her) I offered to run a 240 line for an electric dryer at the not-yet wife's house in St. Louis area. Had been to the house before, and pulled one of the old breakers. To save time (and avoid having to bring the shop with me) I told her where to go, what to ask for, what parts to buy, etc.

When she went to the Box, and showed it to the "pro", she got told "Oh, you need a license to buy breakers, little lady."

(If you ever want to piss off my wife quick, call her that.)

She responded "Then why aren't they locked up? Oh, don't worry. My electrician friend has a license, and he'll be happy to stop in. And talk to your manager. Your district manager."

The thread that will not die???
OK, on the subject of the radio tower
http://www.yanak.com/lightning2x.html

No that was not the tower I took the picture of the guy being cabled down on, BTW, that one was about 1/8 mile outside of my office door. I check towers on a regular basis to look for capacitive coupling problems with the guy wires.

It's an animal with a life of it's own I tells ya!!!!!!!!!

Everybody have a good labor day, we ALL deserve it. I've always said, for gummint sponsored holidays, only 2 are worth a danged,

Labor day for all the folks that did, have, and will keep building this country.

Veterans day for all the folks that gave it all to keep it this way.

I look real close to those politicians who want to use labor as slaves, and vets as chumps - I like to remind 'em about it in November.