L
lifesagasman
Many years ago I was in the Army on a posting to the Outer Hebrides.
The Foreman of Signals, (our boss) sent us on a mission to establish a VHF link to another island. He gave us a grid reference and a Land Rover and said 'go forth'.
It was January and it had been persistently raining down, so on the first attempt to ascend this particular small mountain I got the wagon sunk down to it's axles in a peat bog. It took a REME 'reccy team and 2 breakdowns the rest of the day to extract it.
Day 2, off we went again, but overnight the ground froze and a blizzard moved in. (Not common in the Hebrides)
When we arrived safely at the grid reference we could barely see in the white-out, and began erecting the antenna on a tall mast. The mast was fully assembled, and ready to be hoisted, on a swivel arrangement on the back of the Land Rover. Between the 3 of us, we were pushing on the mast and pulling the steel lanyards to raise the mast.
Just as it got to vertical, we discovered something unexpected. A 10,000 Volt overhead grid, which wasn't shown on the map and wasn't visible from the ground.
Being soaking wet we made perfect conductors for an unlimited current, we were all thrown about 20 feet away and all got severe burns to our hands. The radios were destroyed, and the Land Rover caught fire, which we all stood around to get warm. And mobile phones hadn't been invented.
It was the start of a very bad day.
On reflection, I am wondering if the FoS didn't like us very much.
The Foreman of Signals, (our boss) sent us on a mission to establish a VHF link to another island. He gave us a grid reference and a Land Rover and said 'go forth'.
It was January and it had been persistently raining down, so on the first attempt to ascend this particular small mountain I got the wagon sunk down to it's axles in a peat bog. It took a REME 'reccy team and 2 breakdowns the rest of the day to extract it.
Day 2, off we went again, but overnight the ground froze and a blizzard moved in. (Not common in the Hebrides)
When we arrived safely at the grid reference we could barely see in the white-out, and began erecting the antenna on a tall mast. The mast was fully assembled, and ready to be hoisted, on a swivel arrangement on the back of the Land Rover. Between the 3 of us, we were pushing on the mast and pulling the steel lanyards to raise the mast.
Just as it got to vertical, we discovered something unexpected. A 10,000 Volt overhead grid, which wasn't shown on the map and wasn't visible from the ground.
Being soaking wet we made perfect conductors for an unlimited current, we were all thrown about 20 feet away and all got severe burns to our hands. The radios were destroyed, and the Land Rover caught fire, which we all stood around to get warm. And mobile phones hadn't been invented.
It was the start of a very bad day.
On reflection, I am wondering if the FoS didn't like us very much.
