I respectfully disagree.

A reverse polarity indicator is usually just a light wired from the
neutral (white) to the ground (green). Most of them are not
sophisticated enough to be set off by a messy waveform.

I would bet on Curtis's guess -- an upside down outlet.

Generalizing about inverters is a little dangerous -- some of the
imports are strange -- but at the low end, they usually have ordinary
outlets, and at the high end, terminals for connections, and, yes, the
neutral and the hot are marked as such.

Jim Woodward
www.mvfintry.com

(Larry W4CSC) wrote in message ...
On 2 Sep 2003 18:45:04 -0700, (Curtis CCR)
wrote:

Do inverters put out 120VAC with a hot and neutral (the way most
expect to see 120), or is there voltage on both sides? I ask because
a got a "reversed polarity" indication when I plugged my boat into a
friend's boat over the weekend.

It's isolated from ground and might give you this indication.

What battery did he have in his diesel submarine?....(c;

He has an inverter but no gen set. I have a gen set but no inverter.
He doesn't run much on his boat except a 120V fridge, so when we raft
up together I usually let him plug in to my boat to get a charge when
my generator is on. My generator quit the other night so I plugged
into him to run my 120V fridge for the night (we were heading back in
to next morning).



I am thinking he has an "upsidedown" outlet, but I wasn't about to
tear his boat apart at 10PM to figure it out. But then I thought
maybe the inverter output was causing it.

Thanks

It's probably the inverter. It isn't "dock power". The digital
remnants in the synthesized sinewave could have also triggered your
alarm.


Larry

Extremely intelligent life must exist in the universe.
You can tell because they never tried to contact us.