🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001 20:53:49, ja...@jata-mj.net (Julian Thomas) wrote:

> My favorite 9020 story was about the day of the great blackout (was this
> 1965?) when earlier that day they had hooked up the UPS feature (it had a
> different name then), tested it, and then disconnected it again - before
> the blackout hit Poughkeepsie.
 
I don't know what incident you're referring to.  The one I know of occurred at
the Denver ARTCC in Longmont, CO.  They were running system tests, which 
involved a lot more than the 9020: specifically, some 20 or 30 Raytheon Plan 
View Display radar consoles and their central equipment (I forget if that was 
a 9020E or Raytheon) as well as sector terminals (Controller Update Equipment 
= CUE), printers, etc.  This would have been around 1970.

One night when they were running a test, the headquarters guy on site, a 
fellow named Chick Wright, decided to test the UPS, so he threw the system off
of local power.  The batteries picked up the load while the diesels fired up 
and took over.  So everything worked except for one thing: the back EMF from 
the sudden removal of all that load blacked out the entire town of Longmont.

At least, that's the story that came back East.

-- 
    John Varela