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[Brian Jojade]

Anyhow- is it normal to have "live" cam-lock tails?  Or was the genny operator thinking that the breakers to the legs were open or something?

No, absolutely not.  Cam-lock connectors are not rated for make/break connections under load.  Open cams are certainly large enough for little fingers and whatnot to jam inside.

The only maybe possible reason to have an energized open connector would be for metering purposes before turning it off and connecting it to the final gear.  Even then, most times camloks will be running into another distro or another piece of gear that will have a disconnect point as well and the operator should be metering the lines before turning them on.

[Tim McCulloch]

Proper procedure is to make all connections unenergized, inspect the entire cable / connection run and only then turn on the circuit breaker for shore connections ( shore in this instance means an installed electrical service point )
For generators there is an extra step. After making connections its important to test the service voltages between all legs and the legs and neutral+ground. Large generators can be set up for a variety of industrial loads beyond the usual single phase / three phase 115/208 VAC we are used to.
We for many years had an exceptional special event generator vendor who always sent a trained operator for set up instilling a lot of confidence in all of their customers. One event came up in which our customer hired a generator from a new supplier but assured us that a trained operator would be on hand. Come set up morning - in the dark of course - we provided tails and let the get op do his thing. Started the first chain motor and it moved all of about two feet and poof a bit of magic smoke came out. I checked the front of our PD and all three of the voltage meters were dead. I ran down to the generator and asked what's up. The Gen op said its all good here. I looked at the meters on the genny and found it was set for 460 VAC. The "trained generator operator" turned out to be simply the truck driver.
Trust but verify.

Similar story, but without the Majik Smoke.

Pulled up to Party on the Prairie (Little House was optional), generator loaned by local industrial manufacturer and it was sitting about 50 feet from the stage.  I started it up in absence of a Responsible Person, found it to be putting out 480V.  Told the promoter and eventually someone came out to *re-strap* the genset for 120/208 3 phase Wye.

[Ike Zimbel]

I'm still new to working with power distribution... I've only been working around that kind of power distribution for a couple of months.

All the times that I have seen tails tied into the wall or a generator, we've hooked them to the distro before energizing them, and I am trying to think about what situations would happen where it's necessary to have power on camlocks before tying them in, but I can't think of them.

Anyhow- is it normal to have "live" cam-lock tails?  Or was the genny operator thinking that the breakers to the legs were open or something?

No, absolutely not. This genny op needed to be sent to the seal room, to think about what he'd done... But seriously, it was very poor practice to do what he did. I should have, but wasn't really in a position to, demanded that he de-energize the tails before he left.

[Art Welter]

Yes. I guess this was at a point in my life that I still believed that people could be expected to actually do their job...

I stopped trusting before you, but still had problems..

Everything checked out properly on day one of a two day hotel gig.  My brother flipped on the main breaker in the distro on day two, instantly almost all the fuses in all the FOH and monitor mix gear blew, the amps were undamaged as they were all turned off, but we always just killed the main breaker rather than turning off individual front end stuff.

Turns out a rookie house electrician had untied our tails after we had left, thinking we were loading out in the morning, then realized we were in for two days, then re-tied us swapping a hot for neutral.

Fortunately he had logged his action so we were able to get some money for the stuff that burnt up instead of blew fuses.

You just never can tell what will happen from day to day...

Art

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