East of Omaha

The sun peeking up between the silos of Grossnickle farm.

 

Sunrise near Walkersville, Maryland.

Pictures for Saturday July 9th 2011

Thursday June 30th’s Path

On the road to work.

A roll in the hay.

Fort McHenry Navigational Beacon needs some work.

This green light will be replaced, new steel added and some new electrical wiring installed to better serve the ships entering Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Across the harbor from Fort McHenry, Lehigh Cement loads a ship with grey cement headed for parts unknown.

Powerline Training: Grounding De-Energized High Voltage Powerlines

Today we’ll learn how to ground power lines safely. We are learning this in order to perform more cellular site work on powerline transmission towers.The tower on the left below is actually home to a cell site, in this case a “Cricket” cell site.The antennas are on the very top. These antennas are what makes talking on your cellphone possible. Once trained we can perform the necessary grounding, freeing up the power company workers and improving our business relationship with the power company.

The sun marks the tower for today’s training.

Before work begins, the circuit switch blades must be opened to stop the flow of electrical power.

Opening the circuit to cut off power.

Grounding equipment is gone over by the instructors.

Orange flags are placed on the “live” side of the tower as a warning.

Climbers begin to ascend.

Ready for the equipment to be sent up.

A shotgun stick with ground clamps and leads is sent up.

The first of three circuits on the tower is grounded.

View from under the adjacent tower.

Rigging equipment.

Utilizing the shotgun stick under the watchful eye of an instructor.

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2 out of 3 circuits grounded, one to go.

A climber with his glove bag containing his rubber sleeves, rubber gloves and leather gloves, all of which must be worn in addition to fire retardant clothing.

Too late, the day’s work is done…