most disturbing TV experience?

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by jpdylon

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

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