Cross Phase.

[wtdoor67]

It was a short run from the sub. The wire was double deadended on a Hughes arm. Not excessively big wire, 4/0 ACSR I'm pretty sure. voltage was 12470 Wye. We didn't have a phasing set readily available. The route from the sub. to the DE was probably about 5 or 6 spans. It was about 3 or 4 poles, all buck arms. Harry, the foreman decided he'd just take a small tablet, walk from the sub. pole to pole and carefully(Ha) mark the phasing down with a pen. He did this and showed me his finished product and said. Think that's right? I glanced and said. Sure I guess so.

On the prior part we had deadended the 4/0, left long tails, tied them in on top on insulators and then left the tails sticking up in the air. We had formed them to fit on the other side. The hot connections had to be done with sticks per their working rules.

We had two buckets. Very unusual. Usually had to do it off the pole. Myself and an apprentice were in one bucket and the foreman was in a one man service bucket. The apprentice and I brought the first jumper down and squeezed it together linking the 2 circuits. The next jumper was sticked into position and upon touching a loud KABOOM sounded, plus the usual ball of fire. The apprentice exclaimed. What the hell was that? I replied. Wrong f--king phase. The apprentice said (funny I thought) I hate that GD sound. Without saying a word the foreman went down in the little bucket, drove to the sub. and reset the breakers. We went back upstream, rolled a corner and the rest of it went uneventfully.

[wtdoor67]

This was supposed to be on the linework forum. so solly chally. Maybe LA will move it. Pretty please?

[johnbellamy]

Thats a good one Danny, Bet ya made sure ya had your phasing set next time, also it is hard when a foreman like that does not have his JL, and ape, double check the phaseing right along side with him so you are all in agreement. Some guys are control freaks or think they are smarter than what they are. Hpoe guys read this one, and think before they just take a guys word for it. I have been caught on many occassion when someone has said they have looked at a line, say it all looks good and boom!!!!!! goes the door when I close it, then I tell the stupid ****er thats his free one, next time its his ass.

We used to pick up alot of line with hot line clamps, didn't have cutouts, was on a ice storm, the serviceman told me he had looked at the line, a single phase tap off the three phase, 7200/12470, so I came on with the clamp, ya hold pressure and tighten fast so not to burn wire down, anyway, it is night time, and a ball of fire starts comin back up the line, burnin down the wire as it came, until it locked out the feeder. He said the bells must have flashed over, idiot, so after chewin his ass I drove it out, it was a tree that engulfed a deadend pole that was covered in ice, now we got to put up the wire, all back lot ice poles, and change out the a 50 KVA all out of the hooks, as well as brush out the tree obviously, the feeder was at the sub and knocked out town again, and mr. dip**** service man drives away.

Ya wonder why I have anger issues.

[topgroove]

I hear ya John. That $hit drives me crazy. Awhile back on a storm we had a line supervisor in such a hurry to re-energize feeders they started throwing in station breakers hopping the lines would clear themselves . He must of burned down primary in a dozen places backlot.

[wtdoor67]

Besides Ruby's favorite saying was; " You **** linemen spend 8 hours in the job screwing women, and the go to the bar and build highlines".

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Steve, you done hurt my feelings. Be careful or I'll go Swamprat on you. Have them Jihadist up there scouring Edna with a fully loaded backpack for you.

Guy in Albuquerque, don't ask me how I remember, but he was a Jew. Unusual for a lineman I thought. He was a 4th year but already owned a string of apartments.

One day he came in and was very disgusted. He complained about the guys he was working with. He said. All they want to talk about is p---y. We thought it quite funny.

[wtdoor67]

Don't you remember? We talked about how smart you and I are and how dumb Swimprat is. Wasn't no mention of power lines.

[Trbl639]

Ya'll ain't right!! Lineman never talk about P_ _ _ _y when we worked!!!!

the local papermill was having Labor/union issues.........they has a long 3 phase Delta from their turbine room at the mill, about 2 miles away anyway ,this line fed 2400v/4160 pumps on the river to supply water to the mill....can't remember their voltage, but they had a bank of 333kva step downs at the pumps................they wanted us to build a short line, with primary metering, so they could get on the power company in case some one wanted to sabotage their line...................we got it all built up to them had some underslungs to tie it together, but we had to phase it first......anyway I had never...and nobody else on the crew had either......tried to phase Delta to Wye , so up me and another JL go up with phasing sticks...****, I was getting something like 12-15kv difference between phases....anyway the engineers scratched their heads and I did some more scratching myself..........decided how it would go together, but the jumpers were crazy.............like our middle to 1 of their outside......our outside to 1 of their outside....our other outside to their middle.............

Engineers said to close it in, and I handed him the stick, and the stupid SOB headed to the underslungs..............I stopped him, we got an outage, closed it in, and believe it or not, I was right..................wished I'd let him close it Hot.but I didn't want to have to work over that afternoon!!!!!

[Pootnaigle]

Ummmmmm frum the benefit of sperience....... dont never ever do this.... sounds great but ummmmmmm it'll make ya crawl inna bottom offa bucket quick.
No phasing stick??? No prollem hitch a 3 amp fuse tween two macs. n then go on wif em. It works fine if yer right but bleve me that 3 amp fuse will light up the werld when ya aint.ahhhhh the best laid plans of mice n men..................

[johnbellamy]

I hear ya John. That $hit drives me crazy. Awhile back on a storm we had a line supervisor in such a hurry to re-energize feeders they started throwing in station breakers hopping the lines would clear themselves . He must of burned down primary in a dozen places backlot.

Some trigger happy *******s out there, suprised more are not killed or injured on those big outages, and as ya know, not all taps are fused.

Had a latreal 69KV transmission line, probably 40 miles as the crow flys, had four laterals off of it that feed subs, one was a landfill that had generation back on the line, so it was on one shot, so any bumps on the line took it all out.

When it got knocked out what we did was there was one lateral to a sub, had fault indcators on it, then we had a switch as the line continued at a long canyon crossing, also had fault indicators, so we would check the one lateral on the way out, nothin blinkin, so we would go open the switch at the canyon crossing, heat up the line to there, this was in the summer, hot and dry, so it was not frost or snow load unloading, so the line continued to a switch yard that had two 69KV interupters, but they could not beat the one back at town, but the line split there, had fault indicators looking both ways, the ones that look to two subs, one where the generation was were blinking.

They had some narrow back look at the line, he couldn't look at some because it was not accessable by a pick up truck, but he said he patroled it and it all looked good, they wanted that gen. up cause they were loosing there ass on that, a different story, any way the superindip**** called me on the radio and told me to close in the switch at the cayon crossing, I told no ****in way, that NB didn't know the line and I didn't trust him, I wanted a JL to look at the line, I knew we had a problem, weather was good, and that line burnt down all the time because it could not handle the Gen on it.

Told him no, wasn't gonna do it, so he got pissed like a little girl, said fine, so he sent one of his ass kisser's , a foreman, and he closed it, locked out the feeder again, I saw smoke in the distance, well there was a pole on the ground, the scarey thing was a rural fire crew was on site, and they already put out the fire from when it first went down, so they lit them up again, luckly no one was injured, and the other thing was the down stucture was right by the road in plain site. ****in idiots. They had to eat **** on that one, but the dip**** Sup. used to be a foreman on the crew, and his boy who closed the switch was the guy who replaced him. They just swept it under the rug.

The thing was also we where fed by BPA 115KV steped down th 69KV, it was there interupter that would open, so when I mean it would lock out, it would knock out more than half of the whole county. 8 subs.:rolleyes:

And ya wonder why I got anger issues.

[wtdoor67]

There is sometimes enough difference in circuits that won't always work.


However it do remind me of a good question for Delta Dallas. Dallas if you wuz wurking (dammit getting like swimpy) for some little shirt sleeve outfit that probably had only a couple or so linehose and 2 handlines and you needed to phase 2 primaries together what might be a practical way to do it?No don't ask. You don't have a phasing set. Too expensive. This is just to make you think. There's probably another way but you gotta guess what I'm thinking about. Some of these dogs on here probably know.


That reminds me of a Texan I worked around once. As they say this ain't no ****. He had worked once for a small rat in Texas. The guys will remember this. He said they were working in a small town in Texas and cutting some dead ends off the pole. Probably 12470 (Swimp style), while they were on the pole they needed something to cover the deadends. They didn't have any dead end covers or blankets. There's some rats still around like that I bet. Anyway he said he told the grunt, hey man run over to that grocery store and bring some card board boxes over here. We'll put them on the dead ends, just to kinda keep it away from us. Serious as cancer.

Another told me, and I believe him. Said they needed to pull some guts off a line. They were working on the transmission part. One guy said , I'll go up and pull em off. They finally found a pair of rubbers. One said. Be careful I'm pretty sure that right hand glove has a hole in it. Said the old boy went up the pole and pulled the guts off using one hand.