Re: History Channel

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Charles Brush by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <cfbrush-at-interport-dot-net>


>
>>  > Tomorrow night the History Channel has a double feature, i.e. Modern
>>  > Marvels on "Lightning" and then a show on "High Voltage".
>
>--
>         best
>         dwp


So who else watched?  The lighting program was interesting and had some 
nice footage of Danny Greenhouse's large coil among other things.  The high 
voltage program was very good as well.  I found the "barehanding" technique 
used on some ultra high voltage lines particularly interesting.  Basically 
they use a sort of bucket truck with a highly insulated arm.  As the worker 
is raised near the line, he extends a cable on a pole toward the high 
tension line, clips it on to the line, and raises himself and the bucket to 
the same potential as the line.  What was interesting was that the pole was 
drawing an arc a few feet long as it was nearing the line.  Even though the 
worker is insulated from the ground, he and the bucket still have enough 
capacitance that they create a load.  There was a similar technique shown 
using a helicopter with the worker sitting on a pontoon and doing the same 
thing....pulling a pretty big arc and then connecting the helicopter and 
himself to the line to elevate it to the same potential as the 
line.  Pretty scary stuff.  They wear conductive suits while they are doing 
this since the capacitive effect is a bit uncomfortable when you are 
actually on the cable (not surprising!).


Zap!


Charles Brush
http://www.VoltNet-dot-com