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Posted By: Ann Brush Mean electrical tactics - 10/20/06 08:18 PM
Any of you get up to this kind of stuff. As a student at uni I was a nerdy one (had to be), anyway late night parties in the dorms really annoyed me (I had to study and get sleep thereafter and returning drunk students who turned on music and lights at 2am really wound me up), so I had a solution to shut the lights and the power off for our residence block from my room. I had a electrical plug where neutral and ground were bonded. Stick the thing into the outlet and it would trip the main breaker for the residence block based on the fact that it registered a "earth leakage" (non US electrical system) any attempts to isolate the branch circuit for my room had no effect as it was neutral current tripping the earth leakage main breaker. Without lights and music the party fizzled and I got a decent nights sleep, next morning remove the plug and all is well again with no evidence of foul play on my part and nothing to link me to the stunt. Having reread that - boy that was mean - oh well who cares they should have stayed out.

Edited for typo.

[This message has been edited by Ann Brush (edited 10-20-2006).]
Posted By: gfretwell Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/20/06 09:20 PM
That is probably the most compelling reason I can think of for NOT having RCD or Ground Fault protection on the main. Imagine how hard that would be to find if it was an intermittent failure in a box somewhere.
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/20/06 10:02 PM
I'm with Greg on this one.
GFCI and RCD units are there for the protection of persons, not so that people can defeat them by shorting them out.
Sure that is mean, but is the fact that that device doesn't trip when it is needed any meaner.
Ann, unless you know what you are dealing with, don't do that sort of thing.
Any Electrical protection device is only as good as it's next trip, and where that could be compromised by a person feeding it a false signal, sets a real precedent.
I'd hate to be responsible for killing someone through having busted a protection device.
Posted By: renosteinke Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/21/06 12:06 AM
"Candid Camera" had some fun when they hooked up the misters at the produce case to a motion sensor; customer leans over to check the lettuce, and the mister sprayed them! [Linked Image]

At one job we had a "stupidvisor" who did not approve of radios. Not a problem; the radio in my work area was tied into a relay, along with a sensor from the production line. Anyone coming near the area would shut down the radio- both before they could hear it, and giving us advance warning.

Probably the best "joke" was completely unintended. In the name of energy conservation, the customer (who had earlier eschewed individual switches for each room) wanted all the lights on a motion sensor. Add to that a new furniture allowance- and as soon as someone went into their cubicle they became invisible. They could not understand why the lights kept "flickering."
Posted By: SteveFehr Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/21/06 12:15 AM
In college, we once rewired the handicapped button on the main doors to keep the doors open continuously, so that we wouldn't have to keep badging through with our ID cards all the time, which was a pain for various reasons.

We didn't know there was an alarm hooked up to the doors, though.



[This message has been edited by electure (edited 10-21-2006).]
Posted By: BigB Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/21/06 01:15 AM
A co worker was bragging about the deal he got on a used portable tv which he brought in to work to watch the game. When he went to the restroom we wrapped the plug blades with saran wrap and plugged it back in.
Took him a while to figure it out, while we snickered at his "good deal"
Posted By: e57 Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/21/06 01:24 AM
On happier thoughts of electrically messing with people; [Linked Image]

(You're a woman, so don't take this the wrong way, but there is nothing I can not stand more than special treatment of anyone - male - or female)

So, while I was in the service I wired and ran and maintained generator farms for camps, the one I'm talking about now was Mogadishu Airport. I had ~50 generators of varing sizes all over the place there, and me and one other Electrician were in charge of them to power all kinds of things, RO units machine shops, Air field lighting, radar, and general power around the camps, and - Showers. The showers ran off a distribution system that had ~600 tents and a hanger - plus the pumps and lighting for the showers that used all that RO water we made.

Anyway, at the airport we had the only showers for better part of 10,000 people EIGHT of which were women.... So, but decree of our CO womens showers were 7-8 PM EVERY NIGHT. Officers were 8-9 EVERY NIGHT. And the men from about a dozen units made up the rest - ~9,800 people! And they had a schedule so that each unit would get a shower about ABOUT ONCE A WEEK! (Often longer as more units showed up they would get next in, and leaving units would get priority) Get the picture? 8 women every night - and a scatering of officers, if they wanted to - and and roughly 1500 E-9 and below - TIME PERMITTING between 9-10PM having "Navy Showers" which constitutes a drill - shower by command - 1 minute soap, one minute rinse - AND THATS IT - YOU'RE OUT OF THERE! NEXT!

So.... My platoon ran the showers, and and turned the pumps on and off for all these people - Turn them on for the women and the officers - and then ran the drills of all the rest, where they would have to time ech set on and off until 10PM and anyone left over standing in line in a towel was SOL! Because HQ biv was not far from it and it was "quiet time'.... So heres how it started to go. The guy would turn on the pumps for women, and they wouldn show up untill ~730! Then stay in there.... The officers would give the women more time... Then demand that they got more time - which pushed that 1500 guy back until 930, and that only gave them a 1/2 hour. So my guys would show up, and kindly start again for anyone left over at 6AM - which meant that only a few staff NCOs would show up because everyone else had to work... Including my platoon - which put in about 16-18 hour days. So one of the guys and myself figured we had to do something - if not to the officers but to those 8 women who were getting special treatment from them. We knew we couldn't shut off the pumps or run out of water or have it look like we did anything to cause it. So we inlisted the help of motor-T who had a huge LVS truck with conex boxes on it that was really high. Normally it would not be in the camp but we arranged with supply that they had to load some stuff in an area that would take it near our over-head lines. During the day me and the other spark slightly lowered and weakened the lines so they could be taken out later. The showers were on the other-side of the camp about a 1/2 mile away so one of the shower guys would flash a light in a tent to give me the signal that the women had finally showed up mid way between thier SHOWER HOUR, and I would shut off the fuel to the day-tank of the generator that was running, and then give the signal to the truck that would take out all of the over-head distribution for the whole camp right at my generator farm.

I saw the light flash, shut off the fuel it took a few minutes to run out, so I could be seen elsewhere, the lights went out, and signaled the driver to floor it! It took out the over-head, pulled it off the pole, and shredded it out of the transfer panel - the entire camp was in the dark! Looks like an accident.... The women were soapy, and in the dark. And the officers were standing in the dark in towels waiting.... (As they always did, waiting for the women to get out [Linked Image] ) And I put my best game-face on for when the CO showed up in a towel asking when I could get the power back on. "Well Sir, it'll take me and the other guy until about 2AM to get this fixed." Then he asked if I could get another generator over to just do the showers... "Well Sir, it'll take us about until 1;30 to get a gennie on a trailer over there, re-route to feed everything, it's a lot of stuff over there, about a dozen pumps and lights... And still have to come back here to fix this... If I hurry I could get this done about in the same amount of time to get the whole camp." Just fix it.... [Linked Image] Whole camp dark all night. No showers for anyone that night. And only 1/2 a shower for those 8 women. No one to blame but sagging lines and a over-sized truck on a dark road.

After that we started to plant the seeds of disent in the grunt units that the women were taking all the time in the schedule, and finally got thier CO's to go after ours and to move his tent and open them all night long un-attended. And women got shut off if they didn't get out at the right time.
Posted By: RobbieD Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 12:56 AM
Good Story, I'm sure that you could have done something else to get them back. Did the guys who have to go outside the wire appreciate not having juice all night long? You know, for the small things in life that make their time away from their family more comfortable, tvs, coffee machines, video games. With stunts like that it is easy to see why you are not in the service anymore.
Posted By: PEdoubleNIZZLE Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 01:32 AM
I once had an electric shock pen... Everywhere I went, I'd keep it on the table, and it would be the only pen [Linked Image]

The worst I ever did was my band was doing a show that had a 45 minute time limit. When time's up, finish your song, and get off. Well, the band before us had been up for about 50 minutes and was starting another song. The judges weren't paying attention, and I was also working the mixer because the sound guy decided to ditch and get high.

I had all my gear ready to be put on staged, tuned, and was mad at the band still on. The crowd didn't like them too much, probably their lack of talent. I unplugged the monitors, and their lead singer was sheepishly trying to get closer to it to hear it. He was about 3 feet away, and I put it back on full blast. He screwed up his song and got booed off stage.

I made sure that we had our bouncers guard the mixer while we were on.

Still, i think THIS is one of the funniest pranks
Posted By: GA76JW Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 02:23 AM
PE that is amusing. I've seen it a few times before and still don't understand why the other guy just stands there and screams with him. If I ever look like I'm locked on, I hope anyone near me has the sense to knock me off of it.
Posted By: e57 Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 02:24 AM
RobbieD, The guys at the fence hated any lights at all - it destroys natural night vision, and doesn't do much for NVG's either. Often requested that we dim the air field taxiways... Flood lighting was only allowed in areas that could not be seen outside the camp, otherwise there would be siluetting for snipers. Other than that, for all the guys who knew we did it - knew that it was part of the larger protest of getting to bathe once or twice a month - compared to those who got to bathe in luxury every night, a bitterness that was base wide on the issue at the time. As far as tvs, coffee machines, video games or air conditioning and the like I was in the USMC, not the USAF or Army. Dirt floor 1945 era tent with a bare bulb that often got shut off at ~930PM anyway depending on the highest rank in the tent, only officer tents had recepticals and generally had no use for them. Grunt units didn't even have tents often - slept in the dirt under a poncho - they needed to shower! Otherwise that occured with a five gallon bucket - if at all.


[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 10-21-2006).]
Posted By: e57 Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 03:15 AM
PE that is funny, but agreee that I would hope some would knock me off too. But then again, that guy just got a bannana jammed in his eye - now thats funny....
Posted By: napervillesoundtech Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 05:45 AM
That is a great story about the showers. Must have been loads of fun!

I have tons of fun school electrical pranks. It was usually me & friends doing the partying, so I have a slightly different side [Linked Image] My old high school was interesting because it had those old exposed transformers in the basement. The school also had an intercom system controlled by the phones, so you can imagine how much fun it was once we figured out the phone number to it. We would call each other out of class from cell phones. You could call single rooms and talk through the wall speaker. It was very amusing.
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Mean electrical tactics - 10/22/06 03:13 PM
No pranks... but I DID have a lot of fun rigging up the wildest wiring for parties! (Usually not actually unsafe, just extremely freaky looking and dangling all across the place).

That "Anti Party Plug" indicates a lot of electrical knowledge... I'm not sure whether I'd want to try it in a place with Schuko receptacles though.
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