The Military is starting to scare me...

[ryan77]

Hey there!
Give 'em a break! What ya want 'em to do, work? ROFLMAO!! You get a "helper" on the plumbing van? WHOA!!! Can I come work for your company? Been a service plumber for about 25 years.
God bless,
Tony

We have helpers because its all down town chicago high rise work! So your working with big stuff. Plus you have to park a mile away and its easier to have a kid run to the truck and get something so i dont have to stop what im doing! But there not with me every day they wont pay 2 guys to change a moen cartridge or ball cock!!

 

[chupa]

At work I once saw a pilot start a helicopter with the main rotor blades tied down. The company shall remain anonymus. (Chevron Heliport in Venice, Louisiana. Pilot worked for Chevron. Chevron helicopter)

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

At work I once saw a pilot start a helicopter with the main rotor blades tied down. The company shall remain anonymus. (Chevron Heliport in Venice, Louisiana. Pilot worked for Chevron. Chevron helicopter)

Is that where the Carnival guys got the idea for the Tilt-A-Whirl

 

[jets1959]

At work I once saw a pilot start a helicopter with the main rotor blades tied down. The company shall remain anonymus. (Chevron Heliport in Venice, Louisiana. Pilot worked for Chevron. Chevron helicopter)

Is this where the blades stay put and the chopper spins?

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

Is this where the blades stay put and the chopper spins?

Roger that.
You've got the VISUAL on that target now.


Me thinks that the same event also spawned the invention of the Sit-N-Spin....

 

[Milbikes]

Sparks and hydrogen gas

They don't necessarily blow up from being shorted, they blow up when a spark ignites hydrogen gas in or near the battery.

When I was in high school, I bought a 1963 Ford van. The battery was inside the van behind the driver seat. I was taking the battery out to put a stronger charged one in. I put my 1/2" wrench on the positive terminal first. As I turned the wrench, it hit the body of the van. The next thing I knew, there was a loud BANG, and my glasses were blown off. I swear I hit the ceiling of the van. I had acid all over my face. I tumbled out of the van and ran to the door of an apartment. When the lady opened the door, I ran to her kitchen sink and stuck my head under the faucet and flushed the acid off me. She was very understanding. Today I would probably get arrested for home invasion!

Anyway, there is a right way to work with batteries, and avoiding sparks is one of them. SAFETY GLASSES at ALL times is the other. We must all teach all of our kids, our loved ones, how to jump or work with batteries. H.

 

[pvtjorge]

The thing you need to remember with lead-acid batteries is that they give off hydrogen gas as they cycle. EXTREMELY explosive hydrogen. This is why even if you hook up a battery correctly it can explode if you make the last connection at the battery, arc ignites the gas=explosion.

Even if you make the last connection at a remote ground then wiggle the battery cable, you make arcs at the battery once again=explosion.

When you make reverse connections you've doubled the voltage in a short circut which eventually cause the battery/batteries to explode from heat buildup. HOWEVER if you start with reversed connection you get a very large arc and ignite the hydrogen coming off the battery.

It's not JUST stupid or inexperience that causes battries to explode.

I was wondering when someone was going to mention hydrogen gas present.

 

[Takai13]

"hey, you know those jumper cables we have? yah we are not allowed to issue those out anymore because aparently someone (military) hooked them up backwards and blew a battery up...

Yet it is still OK to issue the weapons? Something that was actually designed to cause injury.

Please understand that I have a great esteem for members of all the branches (both past and present) but this is just plain frightening to an ol' country boy.

 

[ABN173]

FWIW- I've never been able to get a frag to detonate in a fire, or from another device blowing next to it.

Fortunately, I can say the same thing

I'm not a EOD guy so I don't pretend to know much about M-67 fragmentary grenades except how to employ them. I can't imagine flame, heat, and sparks being a good idea of things to expose them to though.

-Dale

 

[JFMickey_D]

When I lived in Minnesota I was getting into renewable energy. I had two wind generators running and a bank of solar panels. All three were hooked up through a charge controller set to 120VDC (light bulbs don't care if the voltage is AC or DC).

So imagine 15 Trojan 8V golf cart batteries all hooked up in series. Imagine a midwest wind storm cranking the wind generators up to almost full furl (pushing almost a total of 1000W). Imagine the charge controller failing in the full charge position.

Then imagine 15 sequential detonations that VERY closely resembled a 5" naval cannon going off.

VERY good thing my battery shed was over 100 feet from the house. Too bad it was less than 50 feet from the garage. Looked like my neighbor had driven his Oliver tractor through one corner. Took me 3 months of weekends to reassemble it. Took me another 2 years to reassemble my backup power system and get it online again.



Oh, and I never did find the roof of the battery shed. My neighbor said he saw it go about 20 feet vertical, but it disappeared in the debris cloud the batteries vomited upwards.

 

[nf6x]

A friend of mine told me about something he witnessed once. He was in a parking lot, and saw a couple guys jumpstarting a beat-up old compact pickup. Cables? Who needs cables? They simply took another car battery, turned it upside-down, and set its terminals down on the terminals of the dead battery.



Yeah.

 

[quickfarms]

The older I get the less things surprise me. There are just some very stupid people out there and they have drivers licenses or at least they are trying to drive!

 

[gunboy1656]

Fortunately, I can say the same thing

I'm not a EOD guy so I don't pretend to know much about M-67 fragmentary grenades except how to employ them. I can't imagine flame, heat, and sparks being a good idea of things to expose them to though.

-Dale

I can say from experience, the frag does not like fire. While in iraq the infantry unit I supported had some PVT lose one into a garbage can. Well the crew came to collect the trash for burning.

My team lived on the other side of the wall where they burned the garbage. We were outside relaxing when all of a sudden BOOOOM. I look over as ashes were flying all over the place, get inside and grab my gear not knowing what's going on. QRF is going bonkers wondering what happened.

20 minutes later we get the all clear. Next day we found out what happened.

 

[jeffhuey1n]

I already told the one about the upside down split cones. Regardless, since that time, two things happen: one, I never trust anyone with my life when it comes to maintenance, I test, check and verify. And two; I'm never surprised at the total stupidity that the human race is capable of. A completely intelligent person with a scary high IQ or an IQ of a turnip is/are capable of implementing Murphy's Law at the drop of a....screwdriver.

 

[m16ty]

A completely intelligent person with a scary high IQ or an IQ of a turnip is/are capable of implementing Murphy's Law at the drop of a....screwdriver.

I have found out that a lot of people with really high IQ have very little common sense. Growing up I had a neighbor that was a rocket scientist before he retired and had a long list of degrees. He could barely start his lawn mower and mow his lawn though. His main problem was he would over-analyze everything and turn a seemingly simple task into an all day affair. Dad used to always say "he's just too smart for his own good".

 

[michigandon]

I have found out that a lot of people with really high IQ have very little common sense. Growing up I had a neighbor that was a rocket scientist before he retired and had a long list of degrees. He could barely start his lawn mower and mow his lawn though. His main problem was he would over-analyze everything and turn a seemingly simple task into an all day affair. Dad used to always say "he's just too smart for his own good".

"Book smart/Field stupid" was my late Fathers description of someone of that caliber.

 

[jeffhuey1n]

"Book smart/Field stupid" was my late Fathers description of someone of that caliber.

My Dad's saying was "you can educate a darn fool but you'll never make him (or her) a smart person".

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

Please pay particular attention to the one line in this song that begins at about Time-Tick 3:18.... It REALLY relates to the current thoughts of this thread.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLWPxAmLdN8[/media]

 

[AN/ARC186]

With some people, sometimes, ya just have to ask....

 

[Jesse6325]

Yup, Not a stupid people person

My idea is to remove all warning labels...from everything...no safety training required anymore...for anything.

Let natural selection weed out the nabobs and make each person PERSONALLY responsible for their own actions!

I have been trying to do this one where I work but every time I suggest it my safety man turns a funny purple color,,,,
Hey, They work on helecopters, If they are dumb enough to open up a GPU ( ground power unit) and electroucute themselves because there was not a warning label on it to tell them not to touch the pretty humming thingy they aint got no place working on anything that flies.