High Voltage Power Line Maintenance by Helicopter
Here is another video of some amazing maintenance workers / daredevils. These men maintenance live high voltage power lines from a helicopter using a fire retardant “hot suit” made with metal fibers to act as a Faraday cage. Once they clamp on the line, their body, and the entire helicopter, are raised to the same electrical potential as the wire – 500 thousand volts. They remain safe as long as there is no path to ground. Even without the high voltage, just stepping off a hovering helicopter on to a little seat on the top of a pair of relatively thin wires strung high over the ground is quite a bold feat in itself. Nice mellow video, pleasant music and the guy has a sense of humor about it.
“I don’t give two hoots and a holler about flying inside a helicopter. Put me outside, that’s where I want to be. On a magic carpet.”
via [BoingBoing]
Video reported to be from Straight Up: Helicopters in Action.
I wish I could download the whole video online
Comment on October 3, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first
comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep
visiting this blog very often.
Comment on March 13, 2010 @ 12:33 pm
[...] multiple video feeds (including infra-red) to ground based operators. Although not as sexy as those high flying power line cowboys deployed form helicopters, this sounds like a fantastically practical idea. Watch the video below for a bit more information, [...]
Pingback on August 20, 2010 @ 9:26 am