Re: Russian high-voltage installation (being scrapped?)

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Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 9:46 AM
Subject: Re: Russian high-voltage installation (being scrapped?)


> Original poster: "Paul B. Brodie" <pbbrodie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> If you haven't gone to this site and looked at these pictures, you should.
> This is incredible.


 You can't help wondering just what the Russians were up
> to with this facility.

Nothing special, really.  This looks like almost any mid 60's outdoor
testing lab for utility type equipment and transmission lines.  These days,
you'd probably see such things indoors, where they could put artificial
weather into the system (rain, hail, etc.).  Look at those pictures of the
laser triggered lightning experiments in IEEE Spectrum, the links to which
were posted a few weeks ago.

It might have been a university research lab type facility too.

What IS sort of a shame is that it's all laying in a heap rusting and
largely useless, but then, running any industrial facility like this is an
expensive proposition. Many things built in the Soviet era may have been
"non-optimum" in some ways that served other useful ends (sort of like some
weapons systems development efforts in the U.S... may never use the weapon,
but provides employment for thousands in Congressman X's district).  This
is, if I'm not mistaken, in the middle of some city (Moscow?), and I suspect
the neighbors might have objected to the noise and commotion, or, it just
became surplus to the needs.  There is a much, much larger facility in
Siberia somewhere, which is somewhat more modern.

Modern research might need more controllability, better instrumentation, or
a better defined environment, and a facility such as that in the photos
might have been archaic and obsolete.    Compare the tools being used in
modern microwave design labs these days.  You don't see many people using
slotted lines and HP432 power meters any more.  It would cost more to keep
them in cal than to just buy the newer device, which is smaller, works
better, etc.  Not to mention that engineer time is a LOT more expensive than
the test equipment.  A single example is the "cal box" used to calibrate a
network analyzer.  Rather than a tedious substitution of all the standards
and loads and thrus to the ports, pushing buttons over and over (state of
the art in 1990 on a 8510C), you have a single box which has relays and
standards inside it, and a USB cable to the VNA. Push one button and 5
minutes later, you're calibrated, and with better accuracy, than 2 hours of
calibrating the old way.  And I don't even want to describe what calibration
with old style reflectometers, sweepers, and power meters was like, not to
mention all the post processing needed (using a calculator or slide rule) to
apply the cals.  So, over a year of lab work, you save about 25%.  That's
about 50K, which goes a long way towards paying for that fancy new VNA.
Even such trivial things as being able to squirt the measurements over the
Ethernet or onto a USB drive save a huge amount of time and effort.

On the other hand, if you're not paying for time (as in a hobby), old and
cheap, but functional, is good.  I wouldn't mind having all that gear out in
the "back 40" (if I had a back 40 to put it in).

 These have got to be some of the largest insulators
> in the world. I'm sure, now that I've said this that someone will surely
> correct me!

Just google for "High Voltage Testing Laboratory"... you'll probably turn up
the HydroQuebec facility, the Univ of Mississipi lab, the CSIRO facility in
Australia, the big lab in France (Les Renardiers group?),  and so forth.
Pretty much every decent sized country has a lab like this somewhere, if
only to train local engineers.


> Paul
> Think Positive
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tesla list" <<mailto:tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <<mailto:tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>;
> <<mailto:terrellf@xxxxxxxxx>terrellf@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 12:04 AM
> Subject: Russian high-voltage installation (being scrapped?)
>
>  > Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz"
> <<mailto:acmdq@xxxxxxxxxx>acmdq@xxxxxxxxxx>
>  >
>  > Hi all:
>  >
>  > A friend from Russia sent me this link:
>  >
>
<http://flyback.org.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2484#2484>http://flyback.org.ru
/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2484#2484
>  >
>  > I think that I saw a picture somewhere of a huge spark coming from
>  > something as the large cylindric object that appears in some of the
> pictures.
>  > Do someone have informations about this place?
>  >
>  > Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz
>  >
>  >
>  >
>
>