I was just sent this:
http://www.glumbert.com/media/highpower
I have no real objections to the job or the way it is done. The arcs don’t look real, though (to a guy that doesn’t know much about electricity). Is this video doctored?
Nope, not doctored. guys actually do this.
What was not visible in the video is that guys enormous balls.
I have no doubt that they do this. It is the baby lightning bolts that make me curious. All the other arcs I have seen, look different.
I’ve seen a TV programme about similar work being done in the UK - in that case, they used something similar to a hot air balloon basket, only metal, which was lifted by the helicopter and hung from the wires, while holding about three people.
That was a great little video. I ran across this before, but this is much better as a video. I read an article and it had a picture. The zapping with the wand is great. It’s something I might of tried 25 to 30 years ago. I’d never do it now.
That zapping is the helicopter discharging static electricity so that everything is at the same potential before the guy gets on the wire.
And the cable pairs they move along are parallel conductors at the same voltage, as well.
Even with the magic suit on, he could not bridge two different circuits, or connect the cable to an earth - it may save him, but the suit can’t drain that much current for long, it would melt.
Si
It’s real. I saw a similar sequence (might even have been the same one) in an IMAX movie about helicopters that played at one of the Smithsonian Museums.
I thought it was the helicopter (actually, the helicopter, basket, and everything else) being charged to the same potential as the line.
That’s another question. I think he was touching two wires. Does that not matter because both wires have the same potential?
The helicopter also produces static electricity. That’s why ground crews often have someone whose job is to attach a grounding rod to the helicopter.
The two wires had to have been at the same potential. Otherwise he would have been toast. 
If they’re on the same phase they do. They must be if he’s really touching two wires, of course, otherwise he’d be fried.
It is from the IMAX film Straight Up. After seeing a pre-release rough edit of it, I told one of the producers that they really had to do the arcing effects better, because they just didn’t look real. She said, “It is real.” Turns out we’ve all seen so many fake lightning and other “electricity” effects in the movies, and so few real electrical arcs, that we think the real thing looks wrong.
My dad is a journeyman lineman and just recently almost got the chance to do this kind of work involving the helicopters but he got a job in New York instead.
Climbing out of helicopters onto live High Tension lines 100m above the ground vs working in New York…
Your dad took took the riskier option
Si
And indeed any time you see two or more EHT lines that close together, they must be in-phase - otherwise they’d arc each other to destruction on the slightest excuse.
Of course, when you think about it, you walk around all your life on something with just as high an electrical potential - the earth has a practically infinite capacity to receive or donate electrons to a willing partner. It’s potential difference that does for you, and there’s none in that man’s working environment.
Yeah, and even knowing this for a cold fact, that video instinctively scares the shit out of me. (Mind you, I’m not comfy with heights either.)
A brief tip o’ the hat to the chopper pilot too. 
Sure, but if what we’re seeing on that clip is just static discharge, we’d see it nearly every time a helicopter lands and I’m betting we don’t.
The sound must be added in after: although you purportedly hear the sparking and clinking from his tools and equipment, you can’t hear the helicopter at all.
What difference does his suit make? Given that he’s not grounded, and he and the helicopter and the wires are all at the same potential, why does he need the suit?
While they’re reaching the same potential, there are arcs flying about - if he follows procedure, these arcs only flow between the wand and the cable, but I think there’s a slight risk that while he’s attaching his harness and grounding clips to the cable, the wand might momentarily lose contact with the cable and another arc might jump from or to part of his body - without the suit, there’s a possibility that this might result in current flowing through parts of his body, which would probably be bad or at the least, not very comfortable.
But there’s probably also an element of belt-and-braces safety here.
It does depend on the atmospheric conditions, but both helicopters and aircraft accumulate static that gets discharged on landing, through landing skids and other discharge points. You just don’t see it. Much of the static charge just leaks away, but it is still significant. When someone is winched down from a helicopter on to a ship, there is a crewmember with an insulated, earthed hook to discharge the static before anyone touches down. It’s those whirly composite blades picking up loose electrons as they move through the air. And aircraft struck by lightning have lots of charge to leak off.
The faraday suit is a protective device. Remember, the linesman is not earthed, so no current should flow through him anyhow - birds that perch on those wires do not wear metalized nomex suits, and they are fine (generally). The suit just ensures that current always flows around him (so internal body resistance cannot generate potential differences within the body that could be lethal), and in an accident, the current WILL flow through the suit, protecting him long enough for a circuit breaker to trip. If the breaker does not trip, then the suit will probably heat up and eventually fail.
Does anyone know what the current rating for one of those suits is?
Si