I may have told this story before but I have not had many meetings with PAT testers.
I was working in a Soho a/v dubbing facility doing general maintenance and installations, so this guy comes in.
I give him a box of 100 assorted 13amp-to-IEC leads and he goes through them in about half an a hour and because they're molded, duff ones get thrown out. He also did 30-odd racks of electrical stuff including triple-VHS copiers, digi-betas, D1s, 1" C-format, bla, bla, bla. That took him 2 days.
Cables were 70p a go I remember, and after he'd gone I found in the box a male 13Amp to male IEC 60309 (commando) lead!! Yes a mains lead wired pins-to-pins and he passed it!!
Then I opened a switch box out of the racks that selected a/v sources with illuminated radio-buttons (the old latch-bar clunky type). Inside, the wires had been cut off the IEC chassis connector, leaving three inches of mains wire stubs in mid-air. Also running around loose in the unit was a PP3 battery that some cowboy had lashed-up in place of the power supply (long gone) and threatened to brush on the mains wires any moment. Needless to say, PAT testers don't open rack units so it had the reassuring sticker on it.
The guy did try to persuade me to take up PAT testing and said it cost 250GBP for the tester and 250GBP for the course.
Like I said - money for old rope.
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Topic: Portable Appliance Testing (PAT)testing (Read 3950 times)