In walks the voice of caution.....
Very good points.
One thing I did not see mentioned was old telegraph or telephone lines. These often went through areas that are no longer inhabited. Old telephone wire is usually about #9 steel wire. It is good if you need heavy steel wire for anything, kind of the big brother of haywire.
Three reasons to reconsider the old telegraph/telephone lines:
1) Believe it or not, some of the ancient open wire lines (especially near RR tracks) are still in use and it can be high voltage. (I was knocked off an 18' pole once. 480VAC HURTS)
2) The old open wire picks up induction current better that almost any other wire on a pole. If it does not have a path to ground, it has spent years picking up a charge and is waiting for you to be a path to ground.
3) The old open wire sometimes holds a memory of the coil it was in. When cut, it will recoil and could whip you.
Again, just be careful.
Yes, again very good advice, and I mean it.
I often assume people naturally know a lot of this stuff, and I need to be reminded.
If my older brother Tom was not with Lines and Stations Ontario Hydro Northern I doubt if I would know it either.
When I mentioned getting wire I was really thinking about the stuff already on the ground.
Not only do old lines fall down but the old line crews often left coils of wire near poles so they would have something to repair breaks with.
(They were also lazy about carrying all of their junk out)
(1) Don't touch live wires!
Well of course not, if it is still in the air it is still likely in use.
Besides, if you are not using a belt and spurs then poles are not so easy to climb. It would be far too easy to fall and injure yourself.
The odds of having spurs and a climbing harness with you is pretty low.
(2) Even if the line is not in use you can still get zapped!
Very much so, and long runs have a lot of capacitance. You can get high voltages and high currents. Line crews have to use grounding poles to discharge lines after they have shut the power off, the grounds must stay connected as long as they are working near the line. what a lot of people are surprised by is that they need to do the same thing even if the line has never had power in it.
Static electricity is still electricity too and in addition to currents induced by magnetics and ground currents a run of wire in the air can pick up a static charge from the air moving past it. It does not take much of a breeze to create quite the charge.
(3) When cut the wire will recoil!
There are no ifs, ands or buts about that one.
The wires are under an awful lot of tension if they are still hanging in the air and will recoil with a lot of speed.
If you, or anybody else, are in the way you can be cut very badly
Thanks very much for pointing all that out.
There are a couple of other points about telephone and hydro lines.
If it is on your map you have at least one L.O.P. fixed.
If it is strung and seems maintained then it becomes a guideline.
You know it leads to people somewhere too.
Because the brush is cut underneath them they are easier to travel along.
Moose and other large game often use them as travel routes and to feed in because of the shrubs at the edges.
Crews travel the lines constantly and they are often flown over by helicopters inspecting them.
You could just light a fire at the base of a pole or two, burn them down, and wait for a line crew to come and repair it.
If it is a true survival situation I would rather be sued...
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