hot-handing HV transmission line - why need the farady suit?

Probably feather corona.

John

Corona discharge...

Reporters (and documentary writers) don't know much about anything but reporting. "Induction" is an electrical phenomenon. "discomfort" is an electrical phenomenon. Hence, all electrical phenomenon must be from induction.

--
http://www.wescottdesign.com

The word "induction" also applies to charges moving in an object under the influence of an electric field.

Estimating a typical human to have about 100pF capacitance, 500kV at 50Hz would result in 15mA at the point of contact. That's enough to cause discomfort.

Jeroen Belleman

Apart from a Faraday suit, I would also need a vast amount of $$$ to go anywhere near such a line.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

Besides the danger of induced currents (I was told in college that 10mA of current through the heart is sufficient to be fatal), I have also seen documentaries of adverse health effects in living things (i.e. cattle, people, trees) that were in constant exposure to such high-power lines. Although I have never witnessed any, I have heard of people setting up illegal ground-level inductors under these high-power lines to "steal" electricity. If this in fact does work, it would also demonstrate the potential of eddy currents being induced in the human body which can serve no good purpose in my mind. Also to consider is the magnetics, since it is inseparable from electrical currents and fields. Judging from the wide publicity of certain magnetics on the human body and the health benefits or liabilities, depending on the magnetic orientation, I would feel certain that degaussing the human body with a powerful alternating magnetic field would have a debilitating effect upon the delicate electrical DC charge in the body's cells and their respective delicate magnetic fields. Therefore, in conclusion, I would have to concur that a Faraday suit would go a long way to protect one's health if not one's life.

These suits are only partially conductive - they are NOT like the metal chainmail suits used by performers around Tesla Coils. The lineman suit is simply used to "smooth out" the electrical field around the body of the lineman, and to conduct away small currents from corona that may accidentally occur while he's working on the line. Without the suit, nuisance corona from the tips of outstretched fingers, elbows, feet or ears, and electrostatically-repelled "flyaway" hair could prove to be quite distracting. A sudden burst of corona from an appendage might evoke a potentially dangerous startle reaction... :^/

Bert

--
***************************************************
We specialize in UNIQUE items! Coins shrunk by huge
magnetic fields, Lichtenberg Figures (our "Captured
Lightning") and out of print technical Books. Visit
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Well they do make over $100k a year. not bad for a high school diploma...

That's a couple of zeros too low for me and that job.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

But, aren't the UHV hi-lines DC? I saw that chopper thing and wonder if

500 KVAC would maintain an arc like that?

Thanks, Rich

I have a colleague that lives in a bungalow almost directly under a

500Kv power line. The fluorescent tubes in his kitchen never go out even when turned off at the switch, and some not all the CFL lights have a constant glow.

My 2cw

--
Best Regards:
                     Baron.

Doesn't have any children, does he?

"PeterD" skrev i meddelelsen news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

They glow too ;-)

Yes ! One of each.

?? !

--
Best Regards:
                     Baron.

The glow-in-the-dark-child --> extreme radiation i.e. Chernobyl jokes.

ay

Studies of trees along the Navy's ELF sites in Michigan showed a growth rate increase and overall healthier trees close to the antenna line, which was on telephone poles. It has since been dismantled.

Steve

The transmissions kept the trees a bit warmer in winter? :-)

"It has since been dismantled."

Kinda of a shame, although I suspect it was just as much due to technological improvements than due to political pressure... you can put up a pretty tiny antenna and get orders of magnitude more bandwidth from satellites than ELF could ever provide, of course. These days some newer submarine radio installations take an antenna's input, immediately convert it to fiber optics and then back to coax only close to the receivers -- saves lots of copper weight and bulk, and it doesn't take much imagination to see how a sub could still be very, very deep under the water and deploy some (potentially disposable) patch antenna/converters on a fiber tether. It's amazing how little loss and how much dynamic range fiber has...

---Joel

Cool idea, although they've been using buoys to carry small LF loops for years. Not much loss in miniature coax at LF either, and how many bits are needed to signal "do it"?!

Chris