Grounding capacitors can be unfriendly, but lifesaving in the longer term.
Not only unfriendly, but it can ruin the capacitors with excessive instantaneous current surges. Better to first discharge through a resistance to limit the discharging current, then apply the "coup de grace" by shorting directly.
Large oil-filled transmitting capacitors are expensive and hard to find. Like tubes, we need to take extra precautions to preserve them as long as possible. I suspect that with the advent of solid state equipment and lower operating voltages, that HV capacitors in a few years will be as hard to find as most transmitting triodes are today.
Don k4kyv
