Wednesday 17/7, we made a start on our emergency resilience project. A relatively simple exercise for the day – install extra low voltage battery powered lighting for use if there is a mains outage. The operating consoles have an overhead light fitting – the contents of which was replaced with a mains powered LED light, a couple of years ago. To provide 12v lighting, it was simply a matter of installing some “peel and stick” LED strips. The white painted inside of the light fitting had an off-white, burnt orange hue – probably acquired when cigarette smoking was common. A washdown with meths followed by isopropyl removed a lot of the grub. A couple of strips of LEDS were laid in – and yes to the observant; they are different strips. The reason for, won’t be divulged here; so keep guessing! A quick check they are working, then the assembly was reattached to the console and it was coffee time! To follow, the led switching needs to be added to the yet to be built, 12v emergency bus panel.
Of course the whole idea of a 12v emergency bus is to have some station functionality in the case of loss of mains power. To this end we have a battery replacement program underway, and today the last of the old liquid lead acid batteries were carted off to the recyclers. A big thanks to Martyn ZL3CK, Maurice (Woody) ZL1MPU and Jim ZL1TGS for the heavy lifting. While they don’t look particularly large, the weight along with the fact they had to be kept level ( to avoid acid spill ), it took 3 people to lift each unit safely down to a trolley. And of course, a coffee break midway made the job somewhat easier.
Now to source the replacements…
