[Amps] 8877 Grid Trip Timing

[Pat Barthelow]

 Karl-Arne wrote in part:
> 
> >   . . . short circuit the 14 kV 15 A rectifier using a 
> > 0,3 mm silver wire, which should not burn off or 
> > melt. This obviously required some courage by 
> > the maintenance personnel.

Hard to fathom that ability to protect such high energy circuits,  from faults...

Kind of like the Master swordsman from Japan who worked with Tom Cruise, and was able to contain his very high energy delivery
of a sword swing, when Tom Cruise'  "horse" faulted at precisely the WRONG moment in the filming of Last Samurai
They say  a real Samuraii Sword handled by an expert was able to completely cut a guy.... well you get the picture...
The Movie delivery of the high energy samauri sword swing aimed at Cruise' neck, by the true master was on it's way when Cruise did not "duck" in time.   Only the complete control and skill by the real world master of samauri swords prevented an awful headline the  next day.

In the 60s and 70s, at the Navy Postgrad School, the ham club station was next to a all metal shell, lab building
that I, as a kid ham, noticed had all kinds of warning signs outside the entry doors.
Keep out    High Voltage, Danger,   Ear Protection Required, No Admittance, Experiment in progress, etc etc...

Once iin a while, we hams  heard what we thought were  LOUD  gunshots inside, accompanied by flashes 
of brilliant light you could see through the frosted glass windows.

Turns out they were discharging HUGE power supplies Many KV and many uF. through  teeny tiny wires, like 
30 gauge.... The resulting explosions,BIG BANGS,  EMP, and Plasmas generated were what they were studying.
Judging from the era, and my later curiosity about EMP associated with Nuke explosions, my bet is they were
studying  EMP in great detail.  One of the techs there told me back then, that you could destroy practically every electronic
device in a house, by simply hanging a wire encircling the house and discharging a big capacitor through it.

   They had a whole library of books, titled and detaiing "Exploding wires" , with high  speed photos of the various "loads" 
vaporizing, mere microseconds after, say  30KV,  400uf  short circuits.

I guess it was good that our NPS ham shack gear at the time was Collins S-Line, and not new Solid State Rigs.

All the Best, 73,
Pat Barthelow     aa6eg at hotmail.com
http://www.jamesburgdish.org
Subscribe: http://bambi.net/jamesburg.html
Jamesburg Earth Station  Moon Bounce Team