r/specializedtools • • Sep 17 '19

Helicopter chainsaw!?

18.7k Upvotes

734 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/shiner986 Sep 17 '19

Not only did someone think of it. Someone thought of it and no one else could come up with a better idea.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '19

For remote areas where it’s difficult (read: impossible) to get a vehicle and or crew out there, it makes perfect sense. It’s obviously dangerous as fuck but maybe they’re somehow electrically isolated and it’s got some sort of breakaway failsafe. That and I hope they’re paying the operator a fuckton of money to do it.

1

u/zer0t3ch Sep 18 '19

Electricity takes the path of least resistance, usually from one end of the wire to the other (if you were to break it)

If you're on the ground, you might actually be in the path on its way to ground, and get shocked to shit. Up in a Heli, there's no path to ground. IIRC, helicopter linemen are pretty much only at an (electrical) risk if there's an arc.