Re: Jurassic Park (SPOILER)

[bdow@ee.ubc.ca (Bruce Dow)]

In article <9308060136.AA01681@cs1.presby.edu> sebugg@CS1.PRESBY.EDU (Stephen Buggie) writes:
>Why is all the discussion of the movie, JURASSIC PARK, appearing on the
>Apple ][ net?  What does this have to do with Apple II computers?
>
>Also, with all the details being presented, the discussants are spoiling
>it for the rest of us who have not yet seen the film!    sebugg
>

Okay, from now on every time we talk about a movie, let's put
the world SPOILER in the subject line so people who haven't seen
the movie in question will know that reading the post will spoil
the movie!

Remember we were talkin about the high-voltage fence? I saw
something interesting on TV that was related to this. Apparently
there is a firm down in the States somewhere that performs
power-line maintenance on LIVE 200,000 volt transmission lines!
The maintenance usually involves adjusting the tension of the
cables and sometimes installing vibration-damping devices.

How do they do it? They use a helicopter to drop the guy directly
onto the cables and then pick him up again!. Apparently the 
utilities gladly pay the $8,000 an hour for the service rather 
than have to shut off the power to the transmission lines for the 
duration of the service work.

The part I found most interesting was that when they showed the
helicopter getting close to the cable, with the guy sitting on
the landing skid, he was hold out a long metal wire. Then a huge
spark like a mini-lightning bolt jumped between the wire and the
cable. Then the guy jumped onto the cable, and held the wire out
towards the helicopter as it moved away. The same lightning bolt
then jumped between the wire and the helicopter.

I was surprised that there would be current between the cable
and helicopter, but I guess at 200,000 volts (AC) and the
helicopter looking rather like a capacitor? anything is
possible?

And why was the guy holding out the wire? Would the lightning
bolt hurt more if it hit him directly than it does going through 
the wire? The guy said that even just crawling along the cable
he could feel the current going through him (maybe he looked like
a capacitor, too?) although it wasn't unpleasant, just a tingling
-- 

Bruce Paul Dow,  undergraduate student, (third year)
Electrical Engineering (Computer Engineering Option)
The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, B.C.)
Member of Team 10, Developers of:  __Mail_System_X__