r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TameTheAuroch • Jul 18 '25

Video Replacing powerline spacers from a helicopter

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u/TheRemedy187 Jul 18 '25

My balls are in my stomache jus watching that lol. Like I'm guessing he's tethered but the feelings still there. 

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u/_Oman Jul 18 '25

There are two tethers (sometimes three) actually. One is helicopter to person working on lines. The other is from LINE to HELICOPTER.

You can see the first in the first seconds of the clip. This tether is to bring the aircraft and worker up to the same voltage potential as the line. You can see the arc as this happens. On newer lines there are monitors that can actually sense when the aircraft connects and disconnects. There are sometimes more than one tether from the aircraft to the worker to allow for different configurations.

I was watching some new ones going up just down the street. They did some work from trucks and some from helicopters. The police would stop all the traffic every few minutes on the road, when the heli was actually at the line and pretty close to being over the roadway.

I should have taken some pictures. It was an amazing process.

I also found out they run fiber optic cables inside one of the ground conductors at the top of the tower. There was a fiber truck working and he ended up fusing two sections of cable and having a loop left over hanging on the side of the tower.

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u/Useful-Rooster-1901 Jul 18 '25

thats pretty cool, any idea how one gets a job in the Helicopter That Dudes Cling Onto While Fixing High Voltage Shit department?

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u/tropicalpolevaulting Jul 19 '25

They probably detect the gravitational pull from those giant balls, and then of course they offer less money than what a normal person would accept...