Yeah, the infamous 'suicide cord'. Looks like a regular electrical cord with plug ends except..... both ends are male (know in some circles as the 'San Francisco' version- yep, I know, politically incorrect but still struck me as funny. Mods do whatever ya' gotta' do to make this post..... appropriate, and then throw me out of the U.S. Senate too boot
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I was using two 115 VAC cords, plugged into my generator (each one picks one leg of 230 VAC power so together they provide 230 Volt power to the house) and then wired them into a pair of breakers. It worked fine of course but took a little time to set up, left the breaker panel open and was just not 'slick'. So I finally ordered a 4 prong (Boys!) rotary locking plug (male) for the generator, and a three prong (male) whip normaly used to power an electric stove or range. My welder is set up for 230 VAC, single phase, 70 amp. so all I now have to do it plug in the suicide cord and back- feed teh breaker panel in the garage, which in turn will back- feed the main breaker panel in the house. All fine and well, as long as one remembers that when one end of that thing is plugged in, the other end is 'live' or hot and will make you sorry if you touch it, drop it on anything conductive, etc. It is kind of like a sword with no handle: it may be a fine tool but it does have a little bit to it.
Getting way back ONTOPIC, which is nothing of course, the normal practice in the electrical / electronic world is to put the spring loaded part of any electrical connection on the disposable part of the device. Now the good Thomas Edison tried to do this very thing and put the spring loaded connectors into the cord, rather than the wall, so when they wore out, one simply replaced the cord, not part of the house. Great idea, except for the part where he would have had a pair of brass prongs sticking out of the walls all over the house and the cords would be female, not male. Yikes! But then again, he envisioned something like 25 volts DC powering up residences so it is kinda' like two cases of moronity cancelling each other out. At any rate, smarter people prevailed, on both fronts, and now electricity is safely lurking INSIDE outlets in all instances and you have to stick something in there (Easy Boys!) to 'get it'. And of course we use the correct type of power, AC and at much higher and far more sane voltages than ole' Tom could conceive of.
Trivia: Edison was on such a dedicated mission to prevent AC from being used as electrical power anywhere in the US, he called it the "killing current" and personally made the world's first motion picture (using moving frame film, which he also invented) to film an unruly circus elephant being electrocuted to death as an example of just how bad AC really is. The film still exists and is fairly gruesome, just as one would think; the elephant is standing there, with cables attached to both front feet, there is a large stream of smoke and the magnificent pachyderm just falls over.
Brian
I too have a portable generator, it's an Ohman 5k. It's attached to my very portable motor home.
If needed I can run an extension cord to the house. So far no need.