Had a call to a house way out past Ignacio to locate an underground fault on the line feeding the well pump. Got out there and isolated the line that was faulted. Then I connected up my fault locator to find the fault location. Not good! My locator just would not stabilize and show me the location of the ground. Very frustrated and could not charge the customer for the call! Went home empty handed with nothing to show for the trip! Lost 4 hours and gas out and back! I just could not charge the guy though! He did give me a jar of salsa and a jar of peach jam! That's how it goes sometimes!

Had a very good find a couple weeks ago on Lift 1, the six pac. It has a 900 HP DC motor driving the lift. I had been experiencing similar issues last winter, a weak motor under full load, on weekends. I had checked the basics, of course. Motor field is rated at 9 amps, and it showed 9 amps right on the drive touch screen. I was not going into 'current limit', checked that too. It ran fine on light load days, during the week. But weekends, it was a different story. If the operator needed to slow or stop the lift, they could not get going again. They were getting 'current overload' faults and couldn't get going! I went up there on Saturday morning, and it was fully loaded! Six people in every chair! Full load! That's just what I needed though, so I could troubleshoot the problem during the time it happens. Kind of scary, but necessary to do. I decided that I should go get my clamp on amp meter and verify the field amps. Even though it was showing 9 amps on the screen, I wanted to verify it. So I went and  got my meter, and put it on the field leads. Wow! Sure enough, it was low, reading 6.5 amps DC current! This is almost 30 % low! I couldn't believe it! I brought it up to 9 amps that evening after shut down. Guess what? Problem solved! Been running sweetly since! No more current overloads!

Had a pretty good week this past week. Lots of things happening at the ski area and, as usual, lots to fix! Got the generator working and charging again. Providing power to the bottom of lift 3. Very critical component to the lifts. Must have 3 phase 480 volts to heat the bottom terminal There is no power line going down there, must have the generator.
It's been a mush better season this year. I upgraded the generator heater and added one more 480 volt, 10 Kw heater, inside the terminal. Much better!