[BC] Re: My near-death experience

[Glen Kippel]

Last Wednesday I went up to the KWXY transmitter site with Glen Barnett, the
owner, to do a little maintenance on the old transmitter.  He was also
concerned about an inability to get the power up; he was concerned about a
current imbalance on the plate transformer.  So I opened up the back,
defeated the interlock and checked the transformer primaries with a B&K
clamp-on ammeter.  Sure enough, there was some variance.  He suggested that
I check the secondary wires going to the rectifier stacks.  I checked these
and one of the legs didn't seem to conform in ratio to what the primary amps
were showing me, so I reached in to try again.  Apparently my arm bumped
against the transmitter cabinet, because there was a flash of light, a "pop"
and suddenly there was no feeling in my right hand.  Also, the main circuit
breaker tripped.  I dropped the ammeter and tried to massage some feeling
into my hand.  Most of the fingers came back to life in about 20 minutes,
but the thumb had no feeling in it at all, and, as I am quite fond of having
an opposable thumb, I decided to not do any more transmitter work and seek
some medical attention.  After making sure that the transmitter was running
OK, we went to the emergency room.  Bummer.  Anyway, aside from a little
stiffness in my thumb, and some ecchymosis in my forearm, I'm fine and it
looks like I'll recover.

Moral of the story!  When you stick your hand in a live transmitter, keep
the other hand in your pocket!  If I hadn't followed that rule, I might not
be here.  The good news is, now my wife can use me for a night light.