Engineer Killer

That was the title of the email with this photo attached:

Disabled high voltage shorting bar, Collins 820D-2
Disabled high voltage shorting bar, Collins 820D-2 AM transmitter.  Courtesy Pete Partinio

That seems about right.

For many, many reasons, this is a bad thing to do.  First of all, the shorting bar is the last point of discharge for the high-voltage power supply.  When all else fails, this is designed to route the 3,500-volt plate supply safely to ground.  Having a stray 3,500 volts floating around inside a transmitter is never a good idea.  Fortunately, it was spotted and removed before anything bad happened.

Secondly, it looks like somebody used a 12 VDC cigarette lighter plug as an insulating device.  Wow, did they get lucky.  This could have started a fire.

As to exactly why it was there in the first place, I cannot rightly say.

And this is why only properly trained people should be working on transmitters, especially tube-type ones.