[Milsurplus] For God's Sake- Stop and Think

[Peter Gottlieb]

My biggest jolt was about 500 joules from a defibrillator capacitor bank.

I was working for Honeywell, who had the maintenance and repair contract for a 
bunch of NC hospitals and I was in the shop tackling some of the "hopeless" 
cases.  The defib section of this instrument was isolated from the ECG 
scope/strip printer and I had a few electrodes on my chest (since there was a 
shortage of signal simulators).

I went to connect my 465 scope ground lead (uninsulated) to the negative common 
of the high voltage section and it was at that moment I discovered a previous 
tech had connected a "temporary" jumper between the ECG isolated common and the 
high voltage positive rail.  This put me directly across the full capacitor 
bank, knocking me across the room and causing me to lose consciousness 
momentarily.  The capacitor bank started at about 300 volts, ended up with about 
25 after I did that.

I was all shakey for about 15 minutes and sore in a bunch of places where I 
landed but lived to talk about it.

After that, they made a rule, no more debugging using leads on the tech.



Jack Antonio wrote:
> Yes,
> 
> A lot of the resistors in the command sets are uninsulated.
> 
> I didn't get shocked, but let some smoke out of the components
> when the meter probe fell between two resistors in a receiver.
> 
> Last time I got shocked was on a homebrew power supply for an
> AF-67. I put a snubber circuit across a pair of contacts in
> the center tap of the high voltage transformer, and even though
> it was only a .1 uf, it still carried a hefty jolt. And yes,
> I discharged the main filter caps, but forgot about the little
> .1 guy.
> 
> Jack Antonio WA7DIA
> scr287 at sbcglobal.net
> 
> 
> 
> David Stinson wrote:
> 
>> antqradio at juno.com wrote:
>>
>>> So what were you doing when Mr. Electron shook your hand?
>>
>>
>>
>> Working on a live BC-456 WWII aircraft radio transmitter
>> modulator/power supply.  "Wonder if that resistor is
>> getting.... YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"
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