"DerbyDad03" wrote in message
...
On Dec 30, 2:29 am, "Zootal" wrote:
"hr(bob) " wrote in message
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On Dec 29, 2:46 pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Dec 29, 3:12 pm, Jules
wrote:
On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:43:13 -0800, DerbyDad03 wrote:
Then I'm going to take all of the strings of Christmas lights that I
own and turn them into hundreds of single bulb strings, each with
their own plug.
Use 4' fluorescent tubes instead - less than 50c/foot and far less
components to worry about. Wrap electrical tape around the tubes to
mask off the bits you don't want visible to give that "lots of small
bulbs" effect.
"Wrap electrical tape around the tubes to mask off the bits you
don't want visible"
When I was a Loran C technician in the Coast Guard back in the 70's,
we used to take 4' fluorescent tubes and slowly approach the
transmitting tower until the tube lit up.
Then we'd hold one end and slide our other hand up the tube. The tube
would only light above our hand, so we could essentially "slide" the
light up and down the tube by moving our hand.
We always made sure we didn't get any closer to the tower than
necessary to get the tube to glow. A megawatt would hurt if the signal
decided you were a good path the ground.
You were a little too close if you got the fluorescent light to
glow!!!!!
Holy crud, they were way too close! One of my old radar instructors used
to
tell us about how a few sailors decided to use a fire control radar (1
megawatt peak, maybe ~50KW average power) to "sterilize" themselves before
going on leave for the weekend. Easy to do, just stand in front of the
dish
when it is operating. They figured that way their "dates" would not get
pregnant. When you are exposed to microwave radiation, do you know what
body
parts warm up first? Anything small that sticks out, such as ears, nose,
lips, fingers, and...other body parts. They sterilized themselves, all
right. Permanently. They should have received some sort of Darwin award
for
that stunt.
If I was close enough to any of my dishes for a flourescent tube to light,
I'd probably wet myself.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
A Loran C signal is *not* the same thing as microwave radiation.
A Loran C signal is a 100Mhz signal sent out in a precisely timed
pulsed sequence.
The danger was strictly based on you becoming a path to ground for the
100 megawatts of power.
Because Loran C is supposed to be operating 100% of the time, any off-
air time (or problems with the timing) that lasted over 1 minute was
considered "bad time" and went on the station's record. 1 minute of
bad-time ruined a "perfect month". (We once set a record for 7 perfect
months in a row, in the days of 15KV vacuum tubes and mechanical-relay
based transmitters)
I mention that stuff so as to explain "tower maintenance" and how it
relates to getting near the tower.
When the tower needed maintenance, the "book" said to kill the signal
to the tower, allow the tower tech to climb onto the tower, and then
energize the tower again. It was perfectly OK to be *on* the tower
while it was transmitting, you just didn't want to be "too close" to
the tower. Typically, this shut-down, tower-mounting and power-on
sequence took less than a minute, so a station didn't ruin a perfect
month over a burnt out lightbulb or some other mundane tower problem.
In reality, because the tower techs knew that shutting down the
transmitter might present problems, and were sensitive to the records
that stations were trying to set, most were willing to "jump the
tower". This was accomplished by running towards the tower and jumping
onto the concrete base with the tower energized. Of course, we never
"allowed" this practice, always "protesting" vehemently - usually to
no avail - but the log books would always state that the tech took it
upon himself to jump the tower.
I've never seen (or heard of) anyone getting hurt via this practice,
but I have seen people serious injured while working on the
transmitters themselves. High voltage capacitors, such as the largest
ones in this picture, pack quite a punch when the grounding system
fails to do its job.
http://www.highenergycorp.com/images...V_caps_5_c.JPG
I've seen caps charge up to over 5KV just by sitting on the workbench
of the transmitter building without a shorting strap attached. We used
to charge them up with a Hi-Pot and then short them out with a dead-
man stick (with the lights off of course) to show the "newbies" why
they should never be in the transmiter building without a journeyman
transmitter technician. After seeing the demo, some guys wouldn't even
go *near* the building!
WOW...Some of the things you learn here....LOVE the stories as
well...LOL..Thanks....