most disturbing TV experience?

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by JCFitz

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) 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

Originally Posted by electronjohn

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.

109

[Sandy G]

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 ?

[electronjohn]

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.

[electronjohn]

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!!

[jpdylon]

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

[Eric H]

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!

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...