[SMCARA] Caveat Emptor!

[Tom]

Good info from Ren!  Always a good idea to give these inexpensive, well 
OK, cheap, items a quick homegrown UL inspection!

If you ever get the urge to play with some of the old "All American 
Five" tube type table radios, please be careful and do an internet 
search on the safety hazards involved.  One "feature" of the AA5 radios 
was that they put the On/Off switch in the neutral (white wire and fat 
prong in the plug in today's wiring) side of the line.  Also the AC 
return is usually tied to the chassis ground. SO, when the radio is off 
and you grab the chassis (ground, right?) you get a nice 120 volt AC 
belt! You have just become the return line completing the circuit from 
hot to neutral. Zap to you!

BTW, the neutral carries the return current to the breaker box and the 
safety ground (green wire and round prong on the plug) carries little or 
no current.  If you have a GFI installed, it will sense any current in 
the safety ground and trip the breaker. Only at the service 
entry/breaker box should the neutral and ground be bonded together and 
go to an external grounding rod. The neutral goes from your breaker box 
(no breaker in the neutral line-a hazard if so) to the ground and also 
the neutral terminal on the "pole pig" (the transformer on the power 
pole or the green box on your lawn, which drops the 7200 or 4400 volts 
down the 120/240), completing the circuit to your house.

Believe it or not, in the "good old days" when hams built their own 
rigs, pole pigs were a great source of "iron" for amplifier power 
supplies!  They would open them up, dump the oil (PCBs? no-one cared in 
those days!), and just use the 4400v  transformer (full wave bridge, 
choke input) and get about 3.8 to 4KV for those big war surplus 
amplifier tubes. Back in those days you could run 1500 watts DC input to 
the final, not PEP output like today!

Here's the gouge:     Hot          Black wire       Thin blade on 
plug/receptacle     Brass color terminal

                                    Neutral    White wire     Fat blade 
on plug/receptacle       Silver color terminal

                                    Ground    Green wire    Round pin on 
plug/receptacle      Green or black term

You will also see red used in house wiring and is normally associated 
with 240v service or in 3 way light switching.

Note: some European wiring uses Brown for Hot, Blue for Neutral and 
Green w/ Yellow stripe for ground.  I have seen this on some computer 
power cords.

This is just a five minute night-fighter course in house wiring issues.  
Consult the NEC (National Electrical Code) for the complete story.

Electricity is our friend, but only if you respect it!

73 de Tom/W4OKW
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 8/2/2016 1:14 PM, Rene Ramirez wrote:
> of what you are looking for...ASK SOMEONE (this list is a good place to