On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 8:59:32 PM UTC-5, ads wrote:
On Fri, 29 Jan 2021 07:39:25 -0800 (PST), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 5:42:10 AM UTC-5, Brian Welch wrote:
On Friday, January 29, 2021 at 5:30:34 AM UTC-5, Puckdropper wrote:
J. Clarke wrote in
:

I'll take on most things but for some reason gas scares me.
I heard the explosion. From where I was sitting, it sounded like a door
being shut hard. Fire trucks from all over started making their way up the
hill to a place about 1 1/2 miles away. We didn't know what was going on,
but firetrucks rarely frequent our road and almost never more than 1 at a
time.

Their house was in pieces. Their cars were burnt. They had been thrown
out of the house by the explosion and were lucky to be alive. Their son,
who was normally home that time of night, was out working late. Chances
are good he would have been killed by the explosion. It's a miracle the
parents weren't.

Four and a half years ago, a gas leak destroyed a house, cars, and almost
destroyed a family. Is it any wonder that gas scares me as well?

Puckdropper
Used to think that way, but more concerned about working with electricity. At least plumbing/gas gives a hint that there's a problem, either visibly with water or smell with gas. Joints can be tested with soapy solution as well (or as my neighbor does, old school master plumber, with a match)....NOT my recommendation btw...
Not that it should be taken lightly, (as you have stated, the results can be devastating), so if you are concerned about doing, or being able to do, any work yourself safely or correctly, should def consider leaving it to the pros...
Climbing down from soapbox...

When I was in the Coast Guard I worked on transmitters that ran at 15KV-DC and
transmitted in the mega-watt range.

The station at Port Clarence, AK:

https://www.arctictoday.com/wp-conte..._PC-scaled.jpg

The view from my "office", the transmitter building at the base the 1/4 mile high tower:

https://i.imgur.com/4Ei7z4L.jpg

We used to walk up towards tower with 8' florescent tubes and watch them light up
in our hands. If you held the bottom with one hand and slid your other hand up the tube,
you could "push" the light to the upper portion.

When we were trying to find intermittent arcing within the transmitter, we'd take
the panels off the high voltage sections, turn off the lights in the building and
run the power supply up to 20 - 25KV. After the flash-bang, we'd swapped out
the bad parts.

In the picture from the bottom of the tower, you can see the above ground tunnel
that we used to get to the T building in bad weather. Poorly lit and unheated.
Lightening struck the tower and set one of the transmitters on fire. When the
alarms went off, I jumped on the bicycle that we used to ride through the tunnel
and headed to the T-Building. The lights in the tunnel had gone out and all I had to
navigate with was the single emergency light at the far end of the 1/4 mile tunnel. I
leaned the basket of the bicycle into the wall of the dark tunnel and peddled as hard
as I could towards the light. I entered the T building, grabbed a fire extinguisher and
put out the fire.

Officially, I was reprimanded for entering an unsafe area without authorization. Off
the record I was a hero for preventing further damage to the transmitters and the
building. About a month later our team received commendation ribbons for getting
the transmitters back on air sooner than anyone expected. It still makes me chuckle
that I was reprimanded for doing something that set the stage for me to be rewarded
as a direct result of those actions.
Institutions with long history (often military or military related)
tend to have the "Don't get hurt" rules that can impact safety and
function - thus you get rewarded for getting reprimanded.

The TV transmitter I worked at was 50kW, running 10 amps at 5,000
volts to some big tubes - the filaments of each of the five tubes in
the video transmitter required 5 volts at 185 amps. There were some
strict rules about ALWAYS two people to do maintenance and ALWAYS
using the grounding stick - wood, about 3ft long, with a metal cap
connected to a 4ft cable of probably 4 gauge welding cable (for
flexibility). Yes, there was a tool (similar to a screw jack) for
unplugging the tubes when they needed to be changed.

Affectionately known as a Dead Man Stick.

They can be used to pull the dead man off of the energized circuit that just
killed him.

We used them to discharge the oil filled capacitors in our transmitters,
the ones that required a shorting strap across the terminals when
they were taken out of the equipment. If you didn't keep them shorted,
the energy from the on-air transmitter could charge them up enough to
hurt you pretty badly.

We also used the Dead Man sticks as a training aid when new people arrived
on the station. We bring a hi-pot and a big capacitor to the mess hall, charge
up the cap and then short it out. I've seen it blow the ground strap right out
of the wooden rod. After the new guys quit sh*tting their pants we'd say "That's
why you never go into the transmitter building without a transmitter tech."