Yes well I can believe that as well. I visited Brookman's Park back in 1961,
and unlike today, the only thing between us and the high voltages and rf was
a line of stands with a ribbon stretched between them, we were actively
encouraged to use a small neon lamp with a coil attached and see if we
could get it to light, Of course we did, I was 11 at the time. We were told
to keep clear of the transmission lines that ran on about 1M stands from
transmitter building to a small brick building at the base of each aerial
and were allowed to go inside the building of one not in use at the moment
to see the huge coil and clamp of the matching system.
There are people who still live nearby to large transmitters who can hear
the program on such diverse things as the chains on mirrors and their
cookers, Also keeping the rf out of telephones etc is not easy at those
field strengths.
Brian

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"jon" wrote in message ...
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 08:39:22 +0100, Brian Gaff \(Sofa\) wrote:

Yes that would certainly do it. I am very sensitive to that
electrostatic buzz you get when you touch double insulated gear that is
still live, so am very wary. Luckily these days I do not attempt to wire
up mains gear as I cannot see the colours of wires any more.
As an aside there are a couple of forms of shock you do not want, unless
you have masochistic tendencies.1. On some navel ships the supply is 440
volts at 300Hz.

No matter where you catch that kind of shock it bleedin well hurts and
often you seemingly cannot let go. To be avoided at all costs.
2 RF burning. When I was still young I got a burn across my palm from a
ham
radio aerial in my garden. . It first started to feel like an itch then
pure pain, I let go very quick but not fast enough to stop a burn that
took some weeks to heal properly. So effectively microwaving your palm
is not advisable!

People get shocks all the time of course, but mostly its what we call
static, caused by the imbalance of ions plus and negative that can occur
merely with friction between materials, whether they be clothing carpets
seating or for air rushing down a vacuum cleaner pipe. I did when I was
younger 'borrow' a high impedance voltage probe and some people could
get charged up with over 20,000 volts in just a few seconds. Luckily its
got no current behind it on discharge so the worst you get is a crack a
spark, and a tiny pin point burn on your finger.
Talking of real life sad cases though, the daughter of an MP had just
had a
new kitchen fitted and was trying to get something out of a cupboard
and touched a securing screw with one hand while steadying herself on
the washing machine with the other. She was killed instantly and the
kitchen fitter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He had
basically joined a number of wires up inside a wall cavity, and not
filled in the hole merely screwed the cabinet over the top, One of the
screws in the back had just caught a live wire and was thus live and the
washing machine was earthed. The report did not go into too many
details, but apparently she was alone her heart stopped and she fell off
her kickstep and hit her head on some appliance.

Brian

At International Aeradio Ltd., there was a guy who had hundreds of RF
burns to his head where he had gone into transmitting cages to adjust
something over the years.