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Radial Waves on Very Old Long Arms

Radial Wave on very old long single guy arm

A couple of Ross' radial waves are still on very old strange looking mastarms. These arms were actually used by PG&E back in the 1950s and thousands of those mastarms graced California streets back then. The arms seem to have been made of two layers of flat iron connected together by bolts. These are the only remaining mastarms I know of in Northern CA, besides a large pocket with gumballs at some power plant somewhere north of Richmond, CA.

Another view of above light

A close up of above light. Note the two insulators above the radial wave reflector, these insulators used to hold the wires from a overhead line. This is what series lights with overhead wiring looks like, one wire goes in the luminaire, the other goes out and brings the circuit back to the line serving series lights. Special series bulbs, usually set at 6.6 amps, were used for series circuits, and these had smaller, low voltage filaments. Series incandescent streetlights were popular in the old days, but are much harder to find today. Los Angeles, CA still has plenty of series incandescent streetlights left. This particular one was series, but has since been rewired to 120 volt multiple. Note the incorrect frosted bulb, incandescent lamps designed for streetlighting service are almost always clear.

Photo of the second radial wave on old mastarm

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