I was once apprenticed to a high voltage cable splicer....(a lead wiper).
after he spliced and insulated a power cable, he would "meg" it with a
meg-ohm meter.  this was a hand held generator with a meter to measure
potential.  He would have me crank up to 10,000 volts and measure current
flow to ensure that there were no faults in the insulation.  He would
then bleed off the static charge with a hot stick with a bleeder resistor
to ensure that we would not get zapped.  As a graphic demo of how much
charge the mile or so of cable could hold, he once shorted it to ground
with a piece of rebar...it burned a bretty good chunk out of the rebar
and I never forgot to bleed off the charge after that.


HAP WHEELER
Network Manager, Suny Plattsburgh

wheeleff@splava.cc.plattsburgh.edu
hap@stealth.kehoe.plattsburgh.edu
ka2tcq@ka2tcq.ampr.org

"Magic is real.....unless explicitly declared as integer"
                                          Wiz Zumwalt