EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: ez24 on May 02, 2016, 05:52:30 am
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http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2014-10.html (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2014-10.html)
Is this a crystal, resistor, and neon bulb ?
Actually this site has several award winners related to stealing copper.
I was trying to find the story about a guy in South America who went up in a balloon with a cell phone to be used in an emergency. It is thought that his batteries were dead and so is he since they never found him.' He got blown out over the Atlantic.
My favorite story is a guy who would like to jump against a window in a high rise to impress people. One day the window broke out and he fell to his death. My guess he REALLY impressed the people.
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Our railroad preservation group has been a victim of these useless scum - a diesel locomotive has a lot of very heavy copper wire in it, and unlike trying to cut it from a power substation, if the loco is not running, there's no risk of electrocution.
Back in the early 70's when copper was high, we collected cut wire ends ourselves, didn't go tearing someone's house or business apart to steal it. Then we spent a few hours stripping the insulation and pounding the coils of bare copper with a hammer to condense the volume, then hauled cans of crushed copper to the scrap dealer. But of course that's too much work even for the otherwise not working sector of the population these days. Just steal it and take it to a scrap dealer who doesn't ask questions, it's all good, right? I for one am not particularly upset when one of these scum gets the comeuppance and cuts into a live 13KV or better line.
</rant off>
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High voltage gloves would have come in handy, sorry about the pun.
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I have a friend who works on the high voltage power lines in North West England. At one point they had a terrible problem with thieves stealing overhead lines and it was an inside job, someone in the electricity company would cut the power to a line then the thieves would throw a cable over it and pull the power line down so that they could cut it. Well, one night they caught the inside man but it was too late for him to inform his friends, engineers monitored a brief fluctuation on a 300Kv line then everything appeared OK.
The next morning they flew the length of the affected line in a helicopter and found at one point the remains of a melted steel cable and two partially cooked bodies.
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Back in the early 70's when copper was high, we collected cut wire ends ourselves, didn't go tearing someone's house or business apart to steal it.
You may not have done but others happily did. Thieves are not a recent innovation, your generation are no better than those who can before or since. Had better opportunities but you weren't better people.
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My favorite story is a guy who would like to jump against a window in a high rise to impress people. One day the window broke out and he fell to his death. My guess he REALLY impressed the people.
He also made a big impression on the pavement.
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My favorite story is a guy who would like to jump against a window in a high rise to impress people. One day the window broke out and he fell to his death. My guess he REALLY impressed the people.
He also made a big impression on the pavement.
:-DD :-DD :-DD made my day ;)
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I was trying to find the story about a guy in South America who went up in a balloon with a cell phone to be used in an emergency. It is thought that his batteries were dead and so is he since they never found him.' He got blown out over the Atlantic.
I think this is the story that happened very close to where I live (~100km) - it was a priest guy who had pulled similar stunts before (flying strapped to party balloons) but then this was supposed to be his big stunt. He had a phone and actually managed to call people when he hit trouble, that was not the (most) stupid part - the most stupid part was that he had a GPS but DID NOT NOW HOW TO OPERATE IT. When in the phone with emergency services they said "give us your current coordinates and we will send rescue" and then he replied "I don't know how to do it". They aired recordings of the call in the news.
I believe then they tried to instruct him on how to operate the GPS but at some point lost the connection, and if I recall it correctly not even remains where ever found.
:palm:
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A few months ago, the New York Times had an article about a sting operation to catch receivers of stolen heavy copper wire from the subway system. The thieves would steal the current return cables, which do not have much voltage on them with respect to ground, but left the system in a dangerous state with only the steel third rail as a return connection.
The agency took cut ends with their name clearly printed on the insulation to suspected dealers, and then arrest them if they bought them.