Sipsey Street Irregulars: Praxis: "My very first RF burn."

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Praxis: "My very first RF burn."

Doing that last little tweak to the final tank circuit, ~130 watts going out, the blade got lose in the shaft, rotating, and making the contact between finger and the trimmer. Carbon fiber sheet IS CONDUCTIVE.. amazingly so... and my body jumped backwards several feet away from the radio and bulkhead, I rolled in a muscle-jerk backwards somersault, through an open engine bay door and down into the engine hold 5 feet below. The GMC 6-71 diesel engine I landed on did a wonderful job of stopping me, and ruining my clothes with a coating of nasty smelling carbon loaded oil.

6 comments:

Old Grey Guy said...: And R.F. burns are like steam burns......very slow to heal. I speak from experience.; June 20, 2015 at 8:23 AM
Anonymous said...: I too, have had my share of RF burns (once is enough).
In the Army, circa 1980, either SP4 or SGT, in Germany, working on an RT524 (vehicle mounted field radio, 30-76MHz, 1-30W), tuning up the transmitter finals tank circuit. Since the power source was a DC-to-HV HF AC, I think that's what I got across. Knocked me across from one bench to the next, and I ended up with an RF burn (or two) on my hand and finger that lasted awhile.

B Woodman
III-per; June 20, 2015 at 10:02 AM
drjim said...: Yep, even small ones take weeks to heal.....; June 20, 2015 at 2:36 PM
MissAnthropy said...: Is an RF burn basically like being microwaved?; June 20, 2015 at 7:34 PM
Anonymous said...: Keep some of this stuff around for next time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojW802yW2RY

Note the thigh burn in the beginning, and at the end.

@B Woodman -- this originally aired the year you were injured...

--Johnathan; June 20, 2015 at 7:44 PM
drjim said...: It's a bit like being "microwaved" in that there's little surface damage. The damage is under the surface, as the energy gets absorbed as it penetrates.

I made the mistake once of capping a section of "Q-Band" (33~50 GHz) waveguide with about 2 Watts flowing down it with my thumb while I flipped the waveguide switch to the load position.

OUCH!

I had a perfect imprint of the cross-section of the waveguide on my thumb, and it took a couple of months to heal.; June 21, 2015 at 12:41 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Praxis: "My very first RF burn."

6 comments:

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