Hey, you used my line. That was an awesome story!

THAT is an AWESOME story!

I was backpacking around the Greek islands living on beaches etc.

Rocked up on the island of Andros. Was mooching around the harbour thinking of getting something to eat when I noticed a lot of shouting on a mega yacht. I could see the captain had a hand full of fuses and the owner giving him a hard time.

I shouted over to see if they needed any help. Obviously they looked at me in my beach life attire thinking what could I do for them. Any how they didn't have a multimeter or any kind of test equipment to see which fuses were good and why they kept blowing.

I jumped on board after assuring them I know what I'm doing. Took my torch apart and bulb in one hand and battery in the other I proceeded to check the fuses, found a good one and checked around the galley. Noticing they had an old kettle with what looked like a stripped wire, I unplugged it and replaced the fuse and hit the main breaker on the board. Lights came back on, boat powered up, all good.

That's how I saved a mega yacht. The owner was Mr Onassis. He bought me a super sized lunch and we sat chatting for the afternoon.

I worked on a job where a medium voltage generator that had sat for 13 years was to be (finally) installed in a new building.  We had reworked the engine but due to time constraints, we were forced to ship it to the enclosure manufacturer before we could complete the test run.  Simple enough, right?  Add oil.  Add fuel.  Add batteries.  Light it off.  Except that the system was missing ALL of the metering.  That was at the new building.  We would be able to start the engine but wouldn't adjust the governor because we didn't have any tools to measure engine speed.

Hey!  We're generator guys.  We can measure the frequency - of the 13.8kV generator.  Guess where the potential transformers are?  Yup.  New building.

So... how much residual magnetism does a 13 year old, 2MVA generator have?  Who knows?  Could be quite a bit or could be very little.  I certainly wasn't willing to risk my Fluke 87 on it - or my life.

But... because I'd been caught a number of times with "Hey, you know a bit about electricity.  Can you check out my...", I had one of those "Free with purchase" Harbor Freight multimeters in the car.  The meter is similar to the one vimarsh_ showed (only red).

So we bolted the free multimeter to the output bus bar - because no one was going to hold the leads with their hands.  Yeah.  No arc flash gear either.  We're doing engine work!  Anyway, we bolted the leads to the output, set the meter on 1000VAC and fired the engine over.

Much to our surprise, the meter didn't blow apart.

346VAC is the output voltage of a 13.8kV, 2MVA alternator that has sat for 13 years.  Your mileage may vary.

Knowing that the system was safe to work on, we move to the Fluke and used the frequency setting to complete the adjustments.

It's always good to have a Plan B - even if it's Free With Purchase.

Great story.

And I thought I had it bad - my workshop is in the basement and my computer is on the main floor and I am always forgetting something at one place or the other.

Did you ever consider rigging a pulley with a 70 kg weight on it to take most of the weight on the way up and down?

Yes, I can admit to forgetting tools and bits and pieces for the job when accessing a stack to install a wireless camera to monitor a birds nest.

The camera was installed on the top gantry of the closest stack to look into a nesting box we built and installed. The control panel, batteries and solar panels went on the opposite side on the gantry below the top gantry.

It is also a place where you start to realise tool tethers also have a great use.

I think my record for this stack was 9 trips up and back down again in one day, due to various levels of forgetfulness. Well worth the effort though, over the years, they have had both Kestrels and Peregrine Falcons rear their young in the nest box.

The nest box always seemed a little big for the Kestrels but they didn't seem to mind. We used to bump into the Peregrine chicks on the ground whilst they were learning to fly, we even caught one hopping up the staircase to the ACC, you can see just on the left of the first picture, to get some more height before launching for another flying practice.

Kind regards.

Up on a tower when installing and/or repairing an Amature radio antenna. Definitely would be handy for voltage and current and a portable scope would definitely help make sure that the frequency range going to the antenna was correct. Being up on a tower is no place to realize that you need a certain tool. At the moment I don’t have a portable scope ant it would be real handy especially being an amateur radio operator. I would use them even in the vehicle to check things out there. Amateurs also do a lot of field communications the biggest being what’s called Feild Day. That’s when amateurs go out to parks and other remote locations set up the or equipment and communicate basically with a generator and profitable equipment including a portable antenna. It’s great fun to do. There are also many different types of communication on the radio but the oldest is CW a form of language using dashes and dots. The radio makes a tone and deepening on how long a key is held down it makes a dash or dot that are made into letters then words.
portable tools would be very useful in the field.

I don't have any tools like this in my maker lab at home, let alone being portable.

-brian

So I'm needing some portable tools for my Vacation Home. The place isn't large enough to keep fun electronics toys around, so I have to take them back and forth for every time I need them.

Over the last few years, this camper has burned out several 12v power supplies. I keep forgetting to take my multi meter with me to see if I can figure out what circuit is pulling too much power. Even the ATX computer power supply I have up there now trips the overload on it, so something up there is pulling 30+ amps @ 12v.

Having a portable Oscilloscope will help with diagnosing it, so I can monitor the voltage on a display as we start testing the different circuits.


Just so everyone knows why we love this trailer.
     1. It is out in the middle of the mountains, so no phone reception.
     2. The lake shore is only 100' down from where this is.

     3. Private boat ramp & dock.
     4. It only costs $400-$500 a year to keep it there.     5. The community is amazing, and fun to play games with.

I have one of these as well - the leads are very fragile. I filled the end with hot glue to try and stabilize the internal connection.