On Friday 14 September 2018 13:58:40 Marty wrote: > The Debian whippersnappers need to know their hacker history :) > > I've heard the stories about getting caught on or near a tower. > Supposedly you can feel it before it scrambles your brains. I would > not seek out the experience.
Sufficient power to be quickly dangerous being absorbed by the body has a side effect of raising ones tempurature, and you are generally well aware of it. Maximum safe long term is 10 milliwatts per cubic cc of flesh. And we only had one small window looking into the transmitter that exceeded that since we have to rent a field meter and measure that every 5 years at license renewal. The only time I was aware of the higher rf field was up in the UP, at a channel 8, and one of the neighbors 3/4 mile back down the hill, came up to visit with an implanted pacemaker, and he had to leave quickly as his pacemaker was going burzerk. > On 09/12/2018 02:08 AM, Gene Heskett wrote: > > Yeah, I've some experience. And it goes back quite a ways timewise. I'm generally ok. The only brain damageing event I've encountered is a pulmonary embolism, usually fatal, 3 years ago that seems to have dropped my IQ by maybe 5 points. I've since failed the mensa test. I sure don't recommend it as a way to die, its scary as can be, not being able to draw a decent breath even with your lungs full to the bursting point. The shot worked, but the docs, with several internish people in tow at a time, that did come to look at a survivor, made sure that I knew I was one lucky guy as the odds of my living thru it were maybe 5%. That was about 3 years ago, and I'll be 84 in a long couple weeks. There is of course some rat poison to discourage a repeat in my nightly pill-tainer. :) But even 15+ years retired, I find my talents at keeping stuff on the air are in demand. I have been told several times that people that actually fix transmitters are a dying breed. Some of the horror story's I've heard from owners while working on something make me believe it. I'm not a "papered" engineer either, I done this sort of thing all my working life on an 8th grade education, getting a G.E.D. about 25 years ago to please the missus of 29 years come December, and who has a degree in music. Passed the test for a 1st phone in about 1.5 hours in 1962, passed the C.E.T. in just over an hour back in 1972, so I have one of those next to the 1st phone in my billfold. Its been an interesting ride thats still interesting. I could do w/o the aches and pains of the years, but I'm the one down 4 feet in the ditch in my front yard patching a broken water line 2 weeks ago. And I had to rent a backhoe to dig the ditch. Carefully, the gas line is in the same ditch!. Seems the town got hungry and decided to license backhoe etc operators AND institute a job permit too. But even the guys who own one found it too costly and time wasteing, so nobody is doing that sort of work inside the city limits now. Sigh. The town has apparently not heard of TANSTAAFL. I wonder how painfull that hole in their foot is. -- Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
