There are a row of tall pylons near us here............it is raining, the wind hasn't stopped completely and it's flipping cold..... ........and there are four blokes working their way along a group of five......... ........climbing them and painting them....... No way, Pedro.
Work of any sort is bad, for that reason I retired at 46 and moved to France to ride bikes when I wanted.
over heard a conversation in an avimore pub about 15 years ago. four lines men had just been interviewed for the job of painting the pylons and they where talking about their pay offer. can remember exactly to the penny but it was in the region of 20odd ph. so god knows what it is now. dont sound to bad for a bit of a breeze and drizzle.
Pahh.....................painting them is girls work When I was down at a station near Scunny many years back they were washing them in the sub only 660kV (if memory serves), live!!!! :screamcat::Nailbiting: Live line washing they use what's like a very big pressure washer but it pulses and the frequency is timed to leave enough air gap to prevent the Elek-trickery walking back down the water jet to get all warm and fuzzy with the guy holding the lance.
When I was working in Buenos Aires the main radio and TV mast came out of the building I as woking in. It was so tall most days it seemed liked it reach the clouds. This one guy used to climb it to make adjustments or repairs pulling his tools on a bucket. I thought then sod that for a living.
Meh! That’s nothing. Try sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day with around 3 emails PER DAY to file away, home by quarter past 5 and 2 hours for lunch. Takes it out of you i can tell yer.
one painted a 14mtr high windmill and a photographer driving by stopped and asked if he could take my pic. it was one of the first full color pics in the national news paper. page 3 of course! not the highest job ive done, that would be painting external rails 37 stories up. used to walk around 12inch wide parapets 10 stories up just for laughs. 20 years on and ive lost my nerve for heights almost completely. was very wobbly on some steels 15 foot up last week
There was a program on telly a while ago about worlds most dangerous jobs. These fellas fly a helicopter next to an energised pylon line!!
funnily enough i was scared of heights when i started at 15. a plank between trestles 6 foot up used to terrify me, but day by day job by job i got used to it, to the point where we used to race climbing 1 handed (cans of paint in the other) up the outside of the scaffold up to maybe 6 stories. no h&s on site back then! But being largely out of that game for the last 18 odd years, my fear has definitely come back. my feet tingle even thinking about heights now
back in the day no prob not a chance now. fit old bugger though aint he? like they he just tosses some broken bricks over the side! you couldnt get one foot on that ladder these days without a harness, hi viz , hard hat and gloves these days!!!
The hard hat is so your brains don't make too much of a mess when you hit the floor. The Hi-viz makes it easy to find your body
Watch the bit 10 minutes in where he's demonstrating laddering a chimney. Can you imagine going up 200 feet like that... The whole thing held up on those pins wedged in little scraps of wood. I'd be thinking about those pins all the way up. I couldn't get to the top of the first one within an attack of arse snapping.
They are but they have an extremely long in-service life so protective paint helps to prolong them.I am just quoting to replace the fittings on some towers that went up in 1929. Average planned life is 50 years or more.
Bloke I know runs shot gun to fend of Somali pirates. Apparently the trick is to just miss their speed boats so it puts them off without making them angry.
