Steve, I didn't intend to hurt your British feelings. I think we have much in common since european unification means a give and take for all peoples participating, but every one sees mostly the gives. Germany surely is one of the top net payers for this unity, but still only few complain about it since industry sees its export chances grow this way.
I was the top scientific appliance guru at my company and have seen a lot of devices built in many countries in some 25 years. The british weren't the worst in craftsmanship, above all compared with american gear. I think british scientific apparatus had - at least in the past - the same problem with too much quality on relatively unimportant places which made things expensive, just like the german ones, especially the eastern german ware (DDR / GDR). To fix a sheet metal angle on to a chassis, we used to drill a small hole, draw a nozzle, cut a thread or insert a threaded rivet and fasten the thing with a turned screw. In America, they punch an undersized hole and put in a self cutting screw, and that's it. That's why foreign industry left us behind, precision on unimportant places. Look at the way british firms used to make transformers - each winding soldered to a little turned post on a phenol resin plate, all sealed in laquer etc. Others use open paper insulated windings without flanges soaked in plastic. Don't complain about European issues, we all won't get much further on the world market without uniting our efforts and rules. > Can you blame us when non elected European bureaucrats interfere with > laws passed by our democratically elected Parliament. Worse thing we > ever did was join the EU!! Financially or otherwise.. > > Don't be too proud of your elected representatives - we have them too -, they have their own dependencies which makes them decide seemingly unexpected, too. > The neutral/earth situation can be problematic. I'm a little ways from > my nearest substation and there is sometimes 50-100V or so floating on > the neutral! We don't have our own ground rods anymore and the old lead > covered (and consequently well earthed) cables have been replaced with > fully insulated ones. Water and Gas pipes are also now all plastic so no > cross-bonding for a ground there either. > > Our mains is 230V +/- 10%. In reality it's still 240V 50Hz and 415V for > three phase. Stuff Europe <G>. > Take it easy, we used to have 220 V +-5% since the war, and now we have 220 V +10% -5% which meqans we have (measured) ca. 235 V all the time. Why complain? We make the transformers a little softer on the primary and that's it. Incandescent bulbs don't live so long anymore, but that's intended, I think. > Same here - only overhead cables are the Grid system, remote farms and > where its absolutely impossible to dig. > > In the last 20 years our electricity has been off twice, once after a > fire damaged the substation - took minutes to re-route the supply, and > the other was planned when all the cables were replaced, took an hour to > reconnect us to the new main under the footpath. > > Steve Blackmore > I can't really remember when we had our last black out hereabouts - I think it was in April 1976 or 77. A heavy snow shower loaded ice on a 50 kV three phase line which was fastened onesided on the masts, so it broke and turned all the masts within about 100 km distance to screws. Since then there was no major power failure except for planned maintenance once every 10 years or so. When I travelled through the US in 2001 with my family, nobody there was surprised that the hotels had hours of blackouts when a thunderstorm was visible on the horizon - battery systems failed after a few hours. If something like this would happen here the papers would print 3 inch letters on the front pages about it. I think America will have a basic problem in the future with their energy supply and competition on the world market if nothing happens. Peter Blodow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Colocation vs. Managed Hosting A question and answer guide to determining the best fit for your organization - today and in the future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/internap-sfd2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
