We've received this picture of a lineman at work in the Dominican Republic. I'm going to ask the sender if he has anymore details as to where and in what installation this was taken. Stay tuned!
Looks like we're still in the dark about the details. (Excuse the pun, bearing in mind the quote below!)
I thought I'd post the link Joe sent me for those of you who can read Spanish. I can get an odd bit of the story here and there, but my Spanish is far from good.
From the service at
http://babel.altavista.com/tr a literal translation
"The prices of petroleum will influence in the adjustments of the service Administrator of CDE reveals became will estructurá of the cost of the service. SANTO DOMINGO. - The general administrator of the Dominican Corporation of Electricidad (CDE), Caesar Sanchez, revealed yesterday that the government will authorize an increase of the invoice by consumption of electrical energy and will retire the subsidy of 400 million weights that pays monthly what it has avoided, until now, which the prices of the service go off. Sanchez informed that president Hipólito Mejía will speak in the next days to announce the measures."
Well, I did say literal!
[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 09-13-2002).]
Pretty good for an Internet translation. I've seen some far worse.
"Dear...
e-mail your hope received..." can't remember what followed. It's a mail some friend in NYC sent to me and had it translated into German. I tried to translate it into an equally bad English.
Scary looking where do you even start?
It seems very weird to have what look like pole mount xformers mounted anywhere other than high up a pole. Surely they should be using pad mounted units?
The LV and MV connections look rather scary too.
He is not insulated, no safety gear, no protection from arcing / flashing and OK, I don't know much about line work but I can't see how poking that with a stick is going to achieve much.
Is this kind of stuff common around the world?
what does he do with that stick at all?
Actually, he looks pretty good. We had a very similar set-up at Lorton prison not too many years ago, except the manholes they were in were not NEARLY as dry, and we used old wooden sticks. Safety gear was a pair of gloves, and if you were smart, a pair of ear muffs (have you ever HEARD a fuse blow close up?????).
We did upgrade not too much later to a lot better equipment, but we had several of the original 1920's style vaults until the day they closed.... as a matter of fact, they still exist, de-energized.
Maybe I'll get permission to take a pic one day shortly.
Isn't that orange pole usually what is called a "hotstick" and used for opening and closing the huge knife switches at power stations and other places like that?
Sven,
The orange stick is a hot stick, mine is good to 70 kv. I may have time to take a picture of my hot sticks this weekend, I have one of the old wooden sticks we used to use, I just got a short one called a "switching" stick, but it is the same beautiful walnut.