Re: More close shots
Kevin, we didn't get the lines rubbered up, but the bucket is dielectrically insulated. I am a journeyman Line Clearance trimmer, too, and worked doing exclusively line clearance for a few years. It was close, but pretty straightforward. The scenario I dislike is climbing big overhangs that have been let go, especially over three-phase, or transmission lines placed vertically on the pole with distribution on cross-arms underneath. At least these trees were vigorous, healthy, and the bucket makes it much simpler in a lot of cases, I think.
Treeblitzer, the reason those spans were skipped is because they were on federally owned property. the feds purchased the land, the poles, the wires, transformers, buildings, everything. the local electrical provider would trim as necessary for severe burners and outages, but these lines didn't even show up on their trim-cycle maps.
As you can see from those pics, i removed the trees that were right under the wire, and side trimmed the spruces up to specs. i think thats the best way to do it, those side trims on established conifers hold well, the tree can recover and heal those cuts, and you get minimal re-growth, so it's better for the tree and the utility. In urban areas here, they want you to leave the branches under the neutral, and tip back the branches adjacent to the conductor, to minimize the visual impact. The downside is that you then have a shelf of branches that tries to grow up-ward into the conductor, and you end up with a big mess of stubs and incorrect pruning cuts that is harder to maintain and will never look right. i've gotten hollered at for taking too much material, but i'm dead set against "tipping back" conifers.
