Mike Jordan
MK in theory stopped making 2A 3pin stuff for the UK when 13A came along but had to re-start when people recognised the need for a “lighting” socket for table lamps etc.
There was at one time in the UK a proposal (sponsored by MK who would have done well out of it) to go over to some sort of totally new connector with a sort of common shell and different pin configuration/size. Very sensibly it was dropped!
Dave Buckley
Don’t knock round pin connectors – 5A or 15A – they are alive and well, living in lighting grids!
And spares are still available. (I have to order them from time to time for a theatre that I tech.)
Barry Bonner
They were alive and well in my shower cubicle in India, which I wouldn’t have been if I wasn’t careful!!
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Peter Neill, Janis Goldring, Mike Jordan
Also in India.
We found they tended to use the old-fashioned three pin (round) sockets mostly and that’s a really GOOD idea having two electricity sockets right next to a swimming pool.
This was actually a very clean pool (I think it’s a shadow that makes it look murky). The sockets are where they plugged the underwater vacuum in. I did try to take a picture of the cable which had been extended with a chocolate block connector wrapped in insulating tape, but I couldn’t because the connector spent most of its time underwater.
Incidentally, those sockets take either 5 or 15 amp plugs.
Very convenient for the pond pump and water purifier. Also looks a clever socket fitting 5A and 15A plugs.
John Nottage
You should worry about shower safety: have a look at my shower in Brazil in 2005. Adjusting the temperature required touching top of the unit! The outside lighting was quite interesting too…
Alasdair Lawrance
We were in India last year.
More wiring at the Red Fort….. Who needs IEE regs? (looks like 3ph, too).
Keith Salmon
Delhi 2014: they say everybody knows their own cables:
Driving
Bernie Newnham
My son and I rode down from Shilma to Chandighar in a car with driver – don’t try it yourself, folks. About half way down the mountain road, as we zoomed in and out of our lane round the endless lorries, my son said "if we die here, we die here" because that was the only thing we could do except hide our eyes.
In our bedroom in Shimla we’d rented an electric fire because it was jolly cold. The fire caught fire in the night. Luckily he noticed and saved us from a different death. I think I’ve done India – an interesting experience but once was enough.
This is one of the colonial mansions of Shilma – left to rot, and why the TV series “Indian Summers” (Channel 4 spring 2015) can’t film there.
Alasdair Lawrance
We also drove down from Shimla to Kalka, having taken the Little Railway up. At one of the many level crossings, we stopped in a queue on the track and were being overtaken by a bus on off-side, (in the face of oncoming, tooting traffic), and a car on the nearside, and a motor bike trying to ‘undertake’ that. Never been so frightened in a car in my life!
Barry Bonner
I went out to India to follow the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, we were being driven in a jeep up the mountain track past where there had been a large landslip, carefully the driver edged round a very large hole in the middle of the road, I looked down it and could see trees!!! Frightened? Moi?
Mike Jordan
When we took the BBC OB “transportable” UKI 1 earth station to Nassau, the fuse box in the corridor was a complete mixture of old/new UK colours and US black and white. The 240v supply they gave us from their “stacked phases” they have was black and black – 2 wires strung between trees to us. In Iceland we were given one side of a phase of Delta 3phase so no real earth and all van warning lights came on. ITN had at least a transformer down to their real 3phase requirement for their flyaway.
