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Val,
Those guys have a lot of nerve. The company I work for had some guys do barehand work, but from a bucket truck. I don't know if your friends told you about their work, but the reason for barehand work is the voltage is so high you can't protect a lineman from it, so they go the other way and isulate the lineman from ground. When you do the barehand thing, they actually "bond on" to the wire, which means they are totally insulated from ground, but in series with the wire. Much like a bird sitting on a electrical wire. They say that as you come close to the wire, the hair will stand up on your arm from the static around the wire. When you take the cable that you bond on with, which is fitted to a special suit that they wear, the electricity will start arcing to it. And then these guys are in a helecopter, which has risks of it's own. I'm afraid if everyone depended on me to do it, we would still be reading from candles. While I was in Chicago a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to see the helecopter crews doing some maintenance on some towers and it was pretty neat. I didn't get to see the the particular show the link talked about, but the History Channel had another show a few years ago about power linemen that I really enjoyed, and it touched on the helecopter barehand technique.
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