I had quite the shocker. One of my portable color sets I picked up not too long ago went south this evening. It was rather disturbing, as something inside the set made a loud POP, and then aparently caught fire. It was a magnavox set.

It took a good 3 hours to air out the room from the burning smell. I pulled off the back and the flyback was near disintegrated and the HO tube was broken :yikes: What the hell happened? The Fly was never running hot that I could tell.

I'm not really crying about it considering I only paid 4 bucks for it. I took whatever useful parts and tubes out of it I neeed and canned the rest. Man that was a little unnerving. Nothing like a loud noise and a little fire to make you jump from your seat.

Anyone else have a nasty experience with a set like this?

My PC monitor did this three years ago as I was doing some email. BANG!, crackle, suddenly shrunken, dark, flaky image on-screen, and a plume of black smoke coming out the top grille. No flames, but it took a week for the stink to leave the room. Nothing like the aroma of burning insulation!
Tom

Prologue.

After waiting six weeks for a new 3-tube Hi Def projection set, it was delivered Dec. 11, 2002.

Six weeks after that it burned a big hole in its 'plastic' chassis.

The smoke spread stink you could smell a week later.


Epilogue.

Service kept it over two months. Finally returned the set April 13, 2003. Screws missing! Case scratched!

By May 14, service was recalled for a convergence problem. In-house alignment.


Epilog^2.

February 15, 2004, service picked up the set again for a week to repair another convergence problem (bad IC this time).

Kindly, RCA had 'recycled' the one-year warranty back to April 2003 and so this all never cost me another scent or a bit of lost CT-100 restoration time, and the set has worked flawlessly since...

Man.... haven't had that happen with a set. That had to be scary. The only thing I can relate to, is back in the day while working in my Uncle's TV/Appliance store one Saturday afternoon, I was showing a new set. (the store was long and narrow) all of a sudden a huge cloud of black smoke and this horrid stink came rolling down from the front of the store. I took the customer out the side door and went back in the front and propped open the front door. Discovered someone had been playing with a new Amana radar range. It must have been on for quite awhile with nothing in it. It melted the whole inside of the case. The whole inside top of it looked like a melted candle. Also will NEVER forget the smell of burned up flybacks in RCA CTC-38's.........

This happened to me on a CTC-31 about 15 yrs ago. Left the room and came back and there was no picture (sound was still playing!) and room was full of smoke. The flyback and HV tube socket were totally charred and melted.
I have been putting a 1/2 amp fuse in the cathode of the HO tube on these kind of sets as I think that would open the circuit through the HO tube. I know the old B/W sets often had a fuse in the damper plate B+ input, maybe I should put a fuse here too (or instead).

I've had a few sets burst into flames, but never when unattened. The Zenith Chromacolor II sets were constantly having the high voltage tripler burst into flames, but usually would go out as soon as you shut it off. Also the Sylvania Superset of the early 80s did that. The closest for me to having one go out of control was an RCA KCS-49 21" metal-tube console in a wood cabinet with doors... I plugged it in, and evidently the power transformer was shorted on the primary, which caused the on-off switch to burst into flames. The wires nearby caught fire, and it was VERY hard to put it out because where it was burining was way up in front out of reach. I managed to blow it out just in time! If I had been out of the room, it could have been very bad :nono:



I also know of house fires that were started by CTC-16s with faulty on-off switches. There was a bulletin about it in the late 70s. I replaced a few of those, in cases where the switch had caught fire, flames traveled up the wires and set the plastic channel drum on fire.

And one more: The Mitsubishi CK-3502. That set is a menace because when the tuning cap in the standy power supply fails, the 5 volt line goes crazy and burns holes all over the place. There is one board with LEDs on it above the screen, and I've seen that one start flaming through the top of the CRT bezel. I had a customer who had to blow out the flames after they came up through the top!

Charles

I am glad no one got hurt. Old or new tvs can start fires. In the 80s I had a ctc 15 catch on fire. The cute .047 line filter cap started mine. The cap had a crack in it and it was spitting out a fine line of sparks. Some how the sparks made there way through the screen on the bottom of the set and started the rug on fire. Also I was stupid and was not watching the set at the time. I saw smoke and ran into the front room and the tv, rug and wall were in flames. I pulled out the plug to the set and was filling and throwing buckets of water all over the room and the tv. I was lucky that I was able to put it out. The front room was trashed and the girl I was living with at the time was really pissed off at me. Now I shut the set off when I know I am not going to watch the tv and un plug it. New or old!!!
Ed

Those same line filter caps on my CT-100 went while I was away one weekend. When I came home I could smell the "old-tv-is-running" smell. The caps dead shorted the set to on and it ran all weekend.

Dave A

i had a apex tv dvd in the shop yesterday. plugged it up picture came on slightly narrow. then snap crackle pop smoke came out of the cabinet a lot of it. yolke plug had a bad connection and it burned a hole plum through the circuit board. it did stink. but it is all better now fixed and on its way back home. steve

We always put power line fuses on the equipment we repair (tube radios, phonos, electronic organs) if they don't have them already. Jukeboxes being commercial equipment usually already have one, but we add one to the fluorescent ballast circuit. We just insert an in-the-line fuse holder before the power line cord reaches any components. It just amazes me how a simple little fuse could have prevented fires or major damage on some of these things had the companies had the decency to insert one. Had a case of a Hammond organ where the 5U4 tube was literally melted because of a short...no fuse, the current just kept flowing into the short till the wiring and tube burned out. At least later model equipment (late 60's or so on) usually included a fuse in the power line.
Many of the earlier CTC models had a circuit breaker in the B+ circuit and fusable links on the filament but there really needs to be a fuse on the AC line too.

Back about 5-6 yrs ago, when I was young & stupid about TVs, this guy gave me an ancient Motorola. I put it in the Valdez, got it home, ran an extension out to it, plugged 'er in, fired 'er up-and smoke immediately issued forth.. Yanked the plug, took the whole mess out to the Dump, & that was that. Later saw that TV in one of the old TV books, it was a semi-valuable set. Naturally...

I have a 1985 Zenith Advanced System 3. The 27" models of these sets which mine is had a problem with the horizontal yoke connectors getting loose from the heat. Apparently the connector wasn't heavy enough and got hot. When they got a bad enough connection they burned a hole in the board. We replaced quite a few 9-454 sweep boards when they were newer and soldered the horizontal yoke wires to the board. Mine is the only one I ever repaired the board.I had to cut about an inch and a half out of the corner of the board and run jumper wires. On my 1st attempt I missed a trace and blew the HO transistor.Had to look everywhere to find an original transistor. Subs won't hold up in this set. I know.Went through a couple of those also. The lady I got the set from was giving it away in her yard sale. She didn't want it in her house anymore. She was afraid it might burn her house down. That tv stunk for weeks even after I got rid of every trace of burnt circuit board. Still going strong 10 years later and it doesn't stink anymore.I've repaired quite a few tvs that had a bad connection in the horizontal yoke circuit.It can burn some nasty holes in circuit boards when this happens.

Another thing I've had happen is a brand new OEM flyback in an RCA PTK195 projection tv blow up with a loud pop. Smoke rolled out the back and stunk up the shop. I was standing right in front of the tv adjusting the convergence when this happened. Sure made me jump. The flyback had a big hole in the side with the windings hanging out and a cracked core. They had a bad run of them a little while ago. There is a rumor that at the factory where they make the parts in Mexico they won't let the workers take bathroom breaks. So they peed in the potting mix and it shorts out the flyback later when it's put in a set. I had another one fail after a week. It was cracked open on the side also.

How about those squar-ish poly caps Magnavox was using in the horizontal circuit in the 80s. (C-8, C-9 chassis, around there) Talk about STINK! I had several occasions when I was still in the truck and knew what was wrong with the set, just from the cloud that was hanging around the house. Sometimes took weeks to get the stink to go away. Some of them burned a hole the size of a quarter in the board when the went.

But perhaps the most disturbing thing was a Mitsubishi projection a couple years ago. The description of the problem was vague, so I opened the front so I could see inside when I powered up to check it out. Hit the power button and the neck of one of the CRTs blew right off! I think it was already cracked, and the shot of high voltage arcing through the crack to the yoke when I powered up finished her off. Fortunatly the crack didn't let the fluid come out. (But I did see a Philips do that last year, but I wasn't there when she let go. Just gave the guy an estimate of $2000, and left. I probably underbid. There was fluid everywhere, of course a lot of it went on the high voltage transformer)

In my younger days went out on many a CTC-16 to replace switch in the homes,
and then another TV to change 2 safety caps where line cord pluged in with a mirror so chassis didnt have to be pulled out far, and then in Milwaukee area
to service all those super old TVs for those who were part of the AD black out program. Any in the program got TVs fixed for free no matter how old. Got to see many very old TVs from that program.

Many years ago I was playing around in an old B&W TV. Don't know what I was trying to fix...but grabbed the metal clip under that suction cup looking thing on the tube from the flyback.

Lets just say the needlenoses I was using flew back pretty hard. Right though my bedroom window.

When I was 9 years old, I experienced my first bad experience when the power transformer in my old Capehart crapped out and the set caught fire! I remember that day every time I smell burned insulation. and then there was last year when the selenium rectifier in my RCA kcs136 went. I'll never forget that smell, and neither will my wife! she still doesn't want my sets in the house!!


Dumont-First with the finest in television. :yes:

man these are all crazy stories, and i thought i had a shocker....

I had another time where I was working on a friend's set. it was a panasonic i believe, kind of a POS with the "panacolor" preset system. I thought it needed a new trippler because my friend complained of flashes and snapping accompanied by bad focus.

I THOUGHT I had discharged the CRT. Connected a clip to my screwdriver and the ground strap on the tube and slipped it under the anode cover. I heard a dull zap and held it there for a good 30 seconds. Figured it was good to go.

i reach to unclip the HV lead and I heard a bang in my ears. I recall my arm shooting back painfully. Turns out I had popped my shoulder out of its socket. man that hurt.

The ground strap on the CRT was not properly connected. The connector that clipped to the chassis was badly corroded and obviously not making contact. Wish I thought of that before I got zapped. Cleared up the connector and the set worked perfectly after that.

man these are all crazy stories, and i thought i had a shocker....

I had another time where I was working on a friend's set. it was a panasonic i believe, kind of a POS with the "panacolor" preset system. I thought it needed a new trippler because my friend complained of flashes and snapping accompanied by bad focus.

I THOUGHT I had discharged the CRT. Connected a clip to my screwdriver and the ground strap on the tube and slipped it under the anode cover. I heard a dull zap and held it there for a good 30 seconds. Figured it was good to go.

i reach to unclip the HV lead and I heard a bang in my ears. I recall my arm shooting back painfully. Turns out I had popped my shoulder out of its socket. man that hurt.

The ground strap on the CRT was not properly connected. The connector that clipped to the chassis was badly corroded and obviously not making contact. Wish I thought of that before I got zapped. Cleared up the connector and the set worked perfectly after that.

We've all done variations of "I thought I had grounded out the HV, but !!! "... I've probably gotten that shock a few dozen times. The nastiest is when it happens on a metal-cabinet set. When you yank your arm out, the skin gets peeled off by the sharp edge of the top of the cabinet like a banana :yuck:

That stuff is all bad, but the two worst TV repair accidents I have heard were: In the late 70s, a tech in Los Angeles was working on a Sony portable. He was powering it up during troubleshooting, and a large electrolytic exploded and went into his eye socket, destroying the eye. And the absolute worst, also the most bizarre of accidents whether TV related or otherwise, was (I recall) in Chicago. I read about it in a TV repair magazine. A tech was working late alone, and went to get a 3-ring binder of manuals off a very high shelf. One of the manuals was loose, and slipped out of the binder. It fell in just a perfect way to slit his throat, and he was found as a fatal victim the next day.

Makes us think!

Charles

man that's scary, loosing an eye and getting your throat slit -- just from doin the everyday tech work...

Here's a neat one I found in a 1955 issue of Radio Electronics magazine. This poor woman was the victim of a CRT impolsion at point blank. That's gonna leave a mark.
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a196/jpdylon/100_3506.jpg

Bonnies' set looked almost new.
What caused that?
I looked her name up and couldn't find it. Harbor Hill, Fla. doesn't come up either.
I suppose she may not be around but it wouldn't surprise me if she were around and if asked would tell the story like it was just yesterday.
I think the city Harbor Hill may be a mistake.
Do cities ever change such names?

I know of the exact thing happening in a Philco-Ford 21" B&W portable in about 1980... It was the Avon lady's set, and she heard what she thought was a car accident in the middle of the night. She didn't find out what happened 'til the next morning!

She called me over to haul it away since she knew I liked to fool with TVs. She didn't want it anymore after that, and she was ready for a color TV anyhow. I couldn't find any reason for the failure. It had just plain imploded! The set wasn't on, and no problems with the chassis. Normally when this happens, it's an exploding electrolytic or a newly installed CRT with some kind of pressure wrongfully applied to the tube (bracket on wrong, etc).

I didn't mention this one in the earlier post since nobody got hurt, and no damage (except for the TV).

Charles

I had a supply multi-section filter cap explode in an early Panasonic color console and the can ended up going through the pix tube while doing convergance. It took almost 2 years for all of the glass shards to fester out of my arm. I did get another tube into that set and it worked up until 10 years ago when the supply of HO tubes really dried up.

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About the worst thing that ever happened on my end was with a new 1971 Emerson console. (remember those two NOS dumont and emerson color consoles I picked up a few years back). I had that emerson going in the basement with the back off after I touched up the convergence. I was working on another set while the emerson was playing on the otherside of the basement. All of a sudden a loud POW and lost the focus. The set was emitting an awful fog haze that was RED in color! The entire basement was filled with a thick red fog and the smell was awful. Typical selenium rectifier went up in smoke. Luckily I have an in-house fan in the hall upstairs. Closed all the windows kept the basement door open with a few windows open in the basement. The vacuum of the house fan pulled that smoke haze out immediately. Only about a day or so for the smell to dissipate.

I feel lucky that I don't have any really bad stories. The worst injury I ever sustained from a tv set came in the mid 90s. I had a later model Admiral bw console which I decided to carry upstairs to my then girlfriend's bedroom. I did okay until I got to the door & had to sit the tv down; I dropped it & it hit my big toe just right to knock the nail clean off. OUCH! That nail hasn't been right since. Still, I insist on carrying heavy tv sets around by myself.

I've had a couple radios with black beauties which would periodically let out a good bang. I had the chassis out & playing on this one AA5 (a Motorola table radio/phono) and when the black beauty blew confetti went everywhere. To show how smart I was, I replaced it with a NOS black beauty and quickly repeated the episode!

Regarding unexplained picture tube implosions: that above RCA is the worst I've seen. Shows how good that safety glass really is. I had an early sixties Zenith that fell over-hard-in the back of the truck when I brought it home. Still, it worked great and I used it for a couple years. At the time most of my collection was in an unheated shed. I walked in one day to find the crt had cracked cleanly across the face right down the middle (horizontally). I kicked myself later for not trying that set before I junked it, though now I realize that the crt had to have gone to air & so nothing real exciting would have happened. Anyway, I suppose extreme cold killed it, maybe with help from old damage from the rough ride home.

This spring i found a Luxor set at the dump. I had been looking for that specific model for 10 years, so of course it ended up in the back of the car. I brought it up in my mothers apartment where i removed the back cover to look for burn marks, blown components etc. but i did not find any, so i hooked up the antenna and plugged in the power. The sound came on immediately, and after some seconds i got some blue lines at the bottom of the screen. I let it run for about 5 minutes with nothing more happen. I bandeg it in the side, and got a loud crackling sound and some smoke. I turned it off immediately. It turned out that one of the soldering joints on a capacitor had gone bad, and the entire comnnection pin had burned away. There was also a nice little hole in the circuit board. I found a new capacitor in a junked Tandberg chassis and put it in the Luxor. I Now i had a picture, but it was dim and impossible to get sharp. I brought it home, cleaned it up and then brought it to work to show it to some friends. We hooked up a VCR, and despite the bad picture, they was impressed. But after abut 10 minutes there was a loud "zap", the picture and sound went out and the power supply made a loud squealing sound. It was a bad HV output transistor. I went to the dump and found another Luxor, a cheaper model, but with the same transistor. I later replaced the CRT, and now it only needs a convergence adjustment to work perfect. A really great set, after all.

By the way, it belongs to the story that my mother knocked over the old CRT when it was standing on her living room floor, and it went to air with a nice "pooooffffff".

There is a certain Rifa foil cap usually used as a mains filter cap that has a habit of filling a room with smoke. They were common in both Thomson monitors and the Astec power supplies used in TRS-80 model IIIs. Both were common at our user group meetings at the time. So common it became kind of a running joke around here as to when the next one would let go. Every so often one would let go, we'd laugh and keep on doing whatever we were doing as would the monitor or TRS-80 that was creating a cloud of smoke. The reaction from those who weren't aware of it wasn't so calm though.

I'm quite sure I still have at least a couple of these monitors in storage waiting to let out their smoke.

Why these companies put a 250V cap across the mains in units for sale in countries with 240V mains I will never know. I have never seen the 400V version of the same cap fail.

I was having a look at a nice CTC-9 in the customers home. The complaint was no pic, with a white line across the screen. I pulled the set out from the wall just a bit so I could get my then-smaller behind between the set and the wall. Removed the back. Looked over the set and found the vertical output was not lit. I reached toward the tube to bump it and see if if came on. Touched the tube, and the pic came back on. Started to pull my arm back, when I brushed the bell of the kine. I heard a CCCRRRAAAACCCKKKKK! and I was AGAINST the wall--HARD! I had not noticed that the room heating radiator was behind a metal grille inside the wall behind the set. I had discharged the HV thru my hand and out my back at my belt-line.

My customer was just sitting there watching the progress, and when she heard the thump of me hitting the wall, she looked at the set, which was now playing normally, and said, "Oh, that was fast! Do I get a discount?"

The vertical output tube had almost no solder on the tube socket pins. After I recovered, I remember touching up the solder work, and basically charging her for a standard service call. She never called us again, as she thought I fixed it too fast to charge THAT MUCH! I never forgot that good old HV feeling!

Our old Zenith 25" console was acting buck, so, off with back for a look-see. Using a finger probe, I managed to draw a HV arc right through the fingernail, the finger..then on to ground. OWIE! At least the wound was cauterized.
Not TV-related...I've been working on Am and FM broadcast transmitters for over 30 years, and have only been zapped once. Working on an old Gates 1KW AM, had the back off, one arm behind my back and the other holding the shorting stick. I THOUGHT I'd gotten all the caps...of course had missed the one I immediately touched.
About 3600V @ 400ma put me into the block wall right behind the transmitter.
The worst broadcast-related zapping I know of concerns a guy working on a 20KW Collins FM. We're talking about 7800V or so @ about 3.3 amps in the PA supply. Guy got super pissed trying to find the problem...flung a crescent wrench into the transmitter's guts, only to have it land RIGHT across the terminals of a BIG filter cap.
Blew the wrench right back out, hit him in the face...broke his jaw and took out over a dozen teeth.

Shakespeare must have said it elegantly somewhere, but every one of these stories brings on a painful chuckle.

Now that we're talking about getting injured I still bear the scar of the picture tube that cut my leg 20 years ago. When I was in my late teens I had one of my projects I drug home in my room by my bed with the back off,a 1968 RCA B/w tv my uncle had in his shed. Turns out it was the tv my mom had when I was a baby. My aunt used to take the tubes out of stuff and check them at the drug store and replace the bad ones. Only she had put 1 or 2 in the wrong socket. Sat for years til got it. I had all the good tubes in it in the right sockets and I had a raster but no picture or sound.I went to bed with the tv by my bed. I don't know why because I never did before I rolled off the bed asleep. I woke up real fast as the neck of the picture tube had broken off in my leg and I was cut bad. I went to the bathroom and got a towel and wrapped it tight around my leg. My mom screamed bloody murder and rushed me to the hospital. 20 stitches later I came home to clean up the blood and broken glass. Needless to say that tv never got fixed. I sledgehammered it for what it did to me. I could have bled to death if it had cut an artery.

Now that we're talking about getting injured I still bear the scar of the picture tube that cut my leg 20 years ago. When I was in my late teens I had one of my projects I drug home in my room by my bed with the back off,a 1968 RCA B/w tv my uncle had in his shed. Turns out it was the tv my mom had when I was a baby. My aunt used to take the tubes out of stuff and check them at the drug store and replace the bad ones. Only she had put 1 or 2 in the wrong socket. Sat for years til got it. I had all the good tubes in it in the right sockets and I had a raster but no picture or sound.I went to bed with the tv by my bed. I don't know why because I never did before I rolled off the bed asleep. I woke up real fast as the neck of the picture tube had broken off in my leg and I was cut bad. I went to the bathroom and got a towel and wrapped it tight around my leg. My mom screamed bloody murder and rushed me to the hospital. 20 stitches later I came home to clean up the blood and broken glass. Needless to say that tv never got fixed. I sledgehammered it for what it did to me. I could have bled to death if it had cut an artery.

How about a Kloss Novabeam TV projector landing on the stomach in bed at 4:31 AM ??? It happend to me on Monday morning, Jan 17, 1994. (Anyone who lives within 150 miles of here won't need to ask why) :scratch2: But for those who don't, that was the Northridge Earthquake. I was already awake when it started, and I had the Novabeam on a (shaky) table next to the bed, elevated on the table because I wanted the screen up high for in-bed viewing. So when It started moving, I grabbed it but couldn't control it. So when it flew sideways, it landed ontop of me in the stomach! When it stopped, I was able to get up and put the projector on the floor safely & undamaged. But I am a witness that the vent screen on the bottom of a Novabeam will shave bloody layers of skin off an abdomen! I will never forget THAT morning! A neighbor was not so lucky, as a microwave oven & pots and pans hit him in the head (fatally) when his mobile home overturned. Our place was a slab house, so it stayed up. Roof torn open right down the middle, and all the windows busted, and 2 of my cars hit eachother in the driveway, but that wasn't too bad compared to many others.


Charles

The worst broadcast-related zapping I know of concerns a guy working on a 20KW Collins FM. We're talking about 7800V or so @ about 3.3 amps in the PA supply. Guy got super pissed trying to find the problem...flung a crescent wrench into the transmitter's guts, only to have it land RIGHT across the terminals of a BIG filter cap.
Blew the wrench right back out, hit him in the face...broke his jaw and took out over a dozen teeth.

Hey John was that one of the Rev-105 transmitters by chance?

One of my worst experiences non TV related was when I was doing infared electrical inspections, this involved looking at electrical gear with a FLIR infared camera in areas including substations. I was at an oil pipeline pumping station in northern Michigan that uses 6000 horsepower 4.16KV motors to run at 3600 RPM, 3 motors run at a time. Incoming primary was 230Kv stepped down to 4160 then through vacuum contactors for the motors. Well the day I was there we were checking all of the motor contactor sets and pump west-2 was called into action the entire building went dim just before the fuses on the primary side popped, loud as a shotgun! One of the techs went out to replace the fuses and we were back in buisness while another tech was getting ready to isolate the failed contact bulb in the control, I understand it was a common occurance for this and they had a good stock of these fuses. It was caused by a phase loss. Well the other tech was a rookie and had no idea or real concept of what he was about to do. I was at the front of the cabinets taking current readings and as I finished went back behind to see what the guy was doing.
Without any protection at all and in his hand was a Simpson-260 meter, I remember yelling STOP! DONT DO IT THATS FOUR-SIXTEEN! but too late he stabbed the incoming 4.16 with that meter and blew himself out the exit door and into the yard. I went flying into the wall and my head crushed the door on the First-Aid station. My IR camera went flying through a computer monitor but still worked, the monitor was still on and I was getting a constant zap through my battery belt from the anode HV making its way down the camera power cable. The rookie sadly didn't make it and the other guy suffered hearing loss from the blast. I had earplugs having come from the pumphouse but even then it was extremly loud to me.
I stayed on the job for another 4 years and focused on substations, even had my hat snatched from my head as a result of 768Kv static buildup, never did get my hat back!
4160 might sound like peanuts compared to 27.5Kv on a 25" CRT but put a few hundred or even thousand amps behind it and life seems to short to mess around! These motors are breakered at 500 amps/leg with a time delay for starting, the incoming transformers are fused at 25 amps and the fuses are 48" in length.
Its like walking into a yard full of cobras, one will get you sooner or later.

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Who was it here a couple years back told the tale of rescuing some neat old set from a barn somewhere, loading it into his minivan, heading out triumphantly home, only to be accosted by the 17,362 angry waspers who lived inside of said TV ?

Arc...loved the line "like walking into a yard full of cobras, one will get you sooner or later." I have the UTMOST respect for two types of workers: tower guys, and the guys who regularly work around VERY high voltages. Tower crews seem to be a hard-livin' bunch, and it's surprising there aren't more serious accidents the way some of those guys party! But, once they're "on the steel", they get pretty diligent about the work. I've climbed 4-500' a few times myself...and it's HARD! Think of climbing a 20' ladder 20-25 times in a row..vertically. Add the weight of tools and crap, clipping and unclipping as you ascend...I don't know how they do it. Climbing down is just as hard.
HV guys, on the other hand, are very methodical from the get-go: proper planning, proper equipment, proper precautions. Certainly increases the odds of making it to your pension.
Losing your hat to a 768kV static buildup? MANNNN...that'll wake you up in a hurry!! The big arc couldn'tve been too far behind,,,hmm?
I can't find the link, but somewhere on the web is a collection of videos of HV mishaps: BIG insulators breaking down, contactors dying in spectacular fashion, energized conductors swinging in the wind and drawing HUGE arcs. Gotta find it--fun to watch. I'll post a link if I turn it up..
And, no, it wasn't one of Rev 105's transmitters. Somewhere in southern MN/northern IA. The incident happened to a friend of an engineer I've worked with on and off over the years. A good cautionary tale about keeping your cool.

Found the link:

http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#Disconnect When you play the video from the 500kV substation, be sure to have the volume up. You'll hear one of the crew let out a "whoop" at the end. Would've loved to have been there!!

You mean this video?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=j54EgxUtT-I

Wouldn't want to be anywhere near there, but its sure cool to watch.

Hey electronjohn:
I was at the north 105.3 transmitter when "who shall not be named" got pissed at that Harris transmitter for melting down the diode stack a few years back. A whole pile of 1N something small stud mounts on flanged heatsinks all decided to short at once taking down everything and it turned out to be lightning damaged. Well he put in another diode stack alright and promptly blew that one up thanks to a lost phase, the pole transformer had also shorted and the internal transformer was not only feeding the transmitter but also the back-swing was feeding the shorted pole pig and created a harmonic that took out the new stack.
As for towers... I was on the old motorola tower in Arden Hills last week tracing a coax down for a 450 repeater that was recently installed. Turns out the 'other crew' had screwed the coax onto an 890 paging stick, whats wierd is I only had 12 total watts reflected power. The upshot was being lost at 6db for that 500 foot run and the reflected was also being burned off at 6db... THEY PUT THE DAMN THING ON 1/2" LINE AND NOT THE 1 7/8 LIKE WE REQUESTED! And this was supposed to be a professional tower crew from out of Chicago.

All I can say is WOW
109

My most heart stopping experience was back in 79 or thereabouts. I was working at a friends shop, just helping out with some of the grunt work really.

The local Cable Company brought in a dead Sony they used for a monitor, it was a 19" model I think, one of the tall wood cased ones with the black plastic back.

I had it sitting on the edge of the cart while I removed the screws for the back, I thought the back would come off by itself but actually the way it was made the entire cabinet & back was one piece so as soon as I took out the last screw the set fell face forward off the cart and landed on it's head, the cabinet was still sitting there on the cart! :yikes:

It busted the plastic frame around the CRT but luckily nothing else, I had to take the front off and epoxy it back together, fortunantly the breaks were all down inside the recessed area wher it wasn't obvious.

He never did get the set to work, Sony's were a bit out of his area so he didn't try too hard, not to mention the shadow mask would have had some problems... :yes: :D