Stoneridge Engineering Home |
: Hi Bert, Check out this youtube video:
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V3OZMW_45M
:
: These same Russian guys have several videos using different voltage
: powerlines. This one is 500kV and the deep sound must be 50 cycles. I
: think they are using some kind of little machine to launch a small wire
: across various powerlines and recording the resulting arcs.
: This one is a loaded 500kV line, and the arc is obviously full load! You
: can hear the echoes for quite sometime. Any idea of what is going on here?
: Thanks,
: Fred
:
Hi Fred,
Yeah - I've nicknamed this pair of geniuses as "Dumb and Dumber", and have been watching examples of their exploits for a while now. They use a weighted object to drape a non-conductive weed-wacker line over one phase of a HV transmission line. They then tie one end of the weed wacker line to a length of copper wire. They connect the other end of the wire to a metal stake that they've pounded into the ground below. Then all they need to do is pull the loose end of the wire upwards to the HV phase until it flashes over. The resulting ground fault current either melts the wire and causes a briefly arcing fault (on lower voltage lines) or it explosively vaporizes the wire (as on the 500 kV line). If they got caught doing something like this over here, they'd be doing a stint in a Federal detention facility. I suspect the same thing would be true in Russia as well. Just hope we don't get any copy cats over here. These idiots are genuine candidates for the Darwin Award.
Bert
Message Thread
« Back to index | View thread »