Radio Frequency Burns From A Long Wire Antenna Supported By A Kite
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- Many of us Ham Radio Operators have discovered what it feels like to get a radio frequency skin burn when accidently touching our transmitter antennas, but how often have you heard about the dangers of touching your receiver antennas output?
In this experiment I flew a kit with wire near an AM radio transmitter, and the length of my wire was 368 feet and 6 inches long. The reason I chose this length of wire is because it was half a wavelength of 1.270 Megahertz which happens to be the frequency of an KAJO Rado just a few blocks away, and due to antenna resonance principles, having the right length of wire based on the frequency you're trying to capture energy from is important.
As I demonstrated in this video. Once my kite was in the air I touched the end of the antenna wire supporting my kite I discovered it gave me painful RF skin burns. Since the radio waves are high frequency the current only burnt the outer layer of my skin because of the skin "effect" of high frequency energy which travels on the outer layer of conductors, and in this case I was the conductor.
If you try this experiment please (be cautious). if your wire happens to touch the power lines or your wire gets struck by lightning you are not likely to survive.
Special thanks to KAJO Radio for providing the RF power for this experiment. LOL.
Someone recently sent me this additional video link of an insulated transmitter tower picking up dangerous amounts of Radio frequency energy • AM Radio tower
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #1 НАЧАЛО ПУТЕШЕСТВИЯ [Новый сезон] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/380Q7gLWGvk/mqdefault.jpg)
Here is a video where someone harvested enough power to weld with. ua-cam.com/users/shortsNHgQyLQsIxA
is the diode and led diode enough of a spark gap to gnd for relative safety. yes im aware that ant is still hot ,please draw diagram of long wire to kite but spark gap at radio end
The only real "free energy" (not if you are the radio station) video on UA-cam that does not say free energy in the title. ;)
lol :D
Because it's NOT free energy.
Time for an array of these into a rectifier for a slow 5v phone charger
@@suprememasteroftheuniverse I get that.
@@ipaqmaster if 100 meters produce 1w constantly , 1000 meters produce 10w , 100km produce 1000w , in 24h those are 24kwh in a year almost 9 megawatt. a network cable has 8 cables in it , 300meters cost about 80euro-nothings , that is about 2400 meters of cable so we ll need about 42 of those to make 100km of cabling (i bet we can get better price than 80) , so 42*80 = 3360 euro-slave-currency for the cabling , and we dont even need batteries :)
I loved how you warn people to not get killed or injured and then you just go and touch your antenna to show how it burns the skin :D
His warnings were not to not do it what he did. But to not do otherwise, like flying it to a power line or in to a storm. If you do it correctly it is safe. But I would not trust most people being able doing it safely, so better no one tries.
Not what he said at all 😂😂😂😂
That was power line and electrical storm specific warnings. Chance of death or permanent damage, not a small burn on the finger.
That was pretty cool and chill... some are like "DANGER!" "Do not try this at home or at school or at kindergarten."
Just factually explained the real possibility of life altering injury.
@@Sonnelllol but no one that shouldn’t try this is going to try this. And if they do, then-meh
Nice experiment. I'll try that sometime as I am 1/2 mile from a AM broadcaster. Several years ago while camping on Pismo beach in California I sent up one of my larger kites on 1,000 feet of Dacron line. The marine layer was overhead and fairly low so the kite went up and through the clouds and was out of sight. Several of us were sitting around in our aluminum frame lawn chairs where I tied my kite off to the plastic arm of the chair. After a few minutes I noticed a little moisture dripping down the line and then we heard a tick tick tick. I noticed sparks flying between the gap of the wet line and the aluminum chair frame. A real Ben Franklin moment.
I hope you were watching out for power lines when you did your kite experiment. I got some pretty impressive sparks from the change in the air during a thunder storm. ua-cam.com/video/_DHBjeobg4U/v-deo.html
I have never had any electrical issues with my kites but where I live now the hawks let me know kites are not allowed in their territory.
I miss Pismo beach
@@GrantsPassTVRepair 😂 if you saw Pismo beach you’d have a laugh. It’s sand dunes on one side and the ocean on the other. No power lines in sight!
@@kevinsellsit5584wait, what do the hawks do to the kites?
An old CBer mate of mine told us on UHF CB one night he put up a longwire and as soon as he connected it to his tuner one of the coils went up in smoke. Sooooo long ago, i can't remember many details so god knows how he had things connected (or not, haha) . he wasn't far from 998 3HA (in Hamilton, Victoria, Australia.) But he couldn't work out why it happened as he fiddled with homebrew antennas and things for years, but this had ever happened before. One of his enjoyments and fascinations was listening to said radio station for FREE as his home stereo was turned off but the speaker wires received the RF and produced audio out the speakers. I still remember the day i bought a crystal radio kit and was blown away that i could hear said radio station on the thing WITH NO POWER SOURCE. What WIZZARDRY IS this!! And the seed was planted......
My friends father had a Ham radio tower and it would induce power into the neighbors professional electric organ. Causing weird noises out of it, even shut off. Neighbors taught piano and organ music, explains the students difficulties on weekends lessons when he'd be broadcasting 😂
Just curious, is there a weather station or airport using high powered radar near him? The only other thing I can think of is the frequency was too far out of bandwidth the Tuner couldn't handle the RF. Even one or two watts of RF can cause damage on some tuners.
Coast to Coast,
I had guitar pedals, and certain electric instruments that you could hear different stations on them
I remember I got one of those introduction to electricity boards when I was a kid. 40 years ago. It was a board with electrical components on it and a manual of diagrams so you could build all sorts of things. The one that stood out, and the only one I remember, was the no power source (at least connected to my board) radio receiver. I was dumbfounded!
Also, just the static electricity in the air caused by wind, hot dry air etc can induce extremely high voltages on a long wire. The perfect example of this would be the full wave loop antenna at 80m that art bell had put up in Pahrump, NV. He had a constant 3000v on the wire, more or less at times. It blew everyone's mind including art's. Crazy....
Sorry, didn't read your reply.
Free energy?
@@mrtechie6810yes, a few mw or wats at most
I remember him saying that, one night back in the 1990s !
Yes, he was definitely a great late night anchor of his radio broadcast. I remember his broadcast, years ago. Interesting he did this too.
As a boy I heard that people living in Wychbold under the BBC radio four 198 metre long wave aerial could hear the radio from their cookers.
Very interesting experiment, tyvm!
In the late 1960s my family lived in a home in Escondido, CA, USA.
The window screens were wire, galvanized steel, I think. Some of the screen wires could vibrate to the frequency of a local AM radio station. My mother discovered the phenomenom, one day she was in the house and heard music outside the window. She went outside to locate the sound and realized it was coming from the screen. The whole family heard it and my father listened long enough to hear the station’s call sign. It was KFI-AM 640 in Burbank, CA! Their power is 50k watts.
Apparently the wire became an antenna element. The way I understand antenna element (parts) lengths are fractional based on the wave length of the radio waves. That’s why an AM radio stationa antenna is so long. To receive the stations signal an antenna will be the same length or a fraction of that length. If a full wave antenna is unfeasible, one can use an antenna 1/2,1/4,1/8… of the wave length. I think the screen wire was some fractional length and was loose enough to vibrate.
So, the screen not only resonated to the radio station's transmitted electromagnetic radiation frequency but was also able to demodulate it and extract sound information at an audible level. That's amazing.
@@peach8352 That part of it is not all that amazing, as AM is very easy to "accidentally" demodulate. All it takes is a non-linear diode-like contact between two conductors and the RF becomes AF... or it can mix with other RF to make new RF. The latter is a common problem at busy radio sites where a rusty tower joint will mix two or more of the locally transmitted signals and create an "intermod" product that is on someone's rx frequency. The demod is actually the easiest part to explain... I am curious why there would be enough RF to light up that screen, as Burbank is not exactly next door to Escondido. Unless KFI's transmitter is not actually in Burbank, but I would not expect it to be nearby at all... that's at least one county away, if I recall... two I think. Seems like there is a missing piece to the story puzzle... and I don't mean to shoot down your amazement... it's all quite amazing... especially if you consider that the range of RF wavelengths is hundreds of meters to millimeters and we use all of them.
@@ka7znm ty
Cool story. KFI was a powerful AM station, so I'm not to surprised. I use to pick them up here in Oregon.
@@ka7znm There used to be (and may still be) a radio station is San Diego back in the late '70s and early '80s whose transmitter was/is located in Baja California, Mexico.
Straight into the vid with no time wasting fill. Well done. Very interesting vid too!👏
Back in the Voice of America days, the small town of Mason Ohio was next to the local VOA complex and their phased array Sterba curtains/multiple transmitters , along with AM station WLW which transmits at 700 Khz (kilocycles to old timers) at one time at a power level of 500,000 watts. Enough for the locals to pick up the broadcasts on their bedsprings. Obviously not resonant, but at those power levels it wasn't necessary.
"honey the bedsprings is trying to sell me insurance again"
@@yodaman8015 What's fascinating is that developers are building new houses directly under WLW's 50kw Blaw Knox tower ! How's that going to work out I wonder........
I am just amazed that your skin got burned. Years ago I was at a antenna bank in Roxborough Pa. The location had men working on the maintenance part of the towers that stood at least 1200 feet high. I am being conservative on the antenna height. Just started talking to the men and go permission to go into the field. Was just amazed as to my hair all over my skin just standing as if their was going to be an electrical discharge. One of the workers said the number of watts pushed thought all the antenna was in the millions of watts. Now that is a lot of power just going into the ari.
its electricity, just delivered via atmosphere.
@@anthonywike8042 That is just amazing electricity. Do not see but the hair on your arms vibrates and stands.
@@victoryfirst2878 agreed, it is amazing.
@@anthonywike8042 Here is an idea that might make you go crazy. Could you connect this to a wood burning arc surface pattern burner ??? I would love to see what patterns this would make, wouldn't you Anthony ??? Nice
@@victoryfirst2878 that would be a total trip. Do a wood burn by different radio stations. Totally a great idea.
Great video! I had often heard of RF burns, but you took one for the team and showed a real burn. Loved your Ben Franklin experiment too!
yes that's where the expression *smoking hot show* originated
RF burns are painful. I got one that went right to the bone when I was working on a 30+ foot vertical antenna. There was another 30+ foot vertical about 30 feet away that was transmitting a few hundred watts RTTY. This was on a 378’ Coast Guard cutter. I had tagged the antenna I was working on, but not the other nearby vertical. Learned my lesson because, that burn hurt for several weeks.
Hahahahaaaa Dave!!!!!! I used to live in the building next to your shop when I was twelve. You were right next to game swap. I lived in the apartments with the stairs. It's crazy how I stumbled upon this video haha you taught me so much stuff and the first thing was your LED lights on a 9v battery. I've always remembered you man. I'm 32 now. I hope you're doing well man, I really do.
It's always fun to encounter someone who remembers me from their childhood. Believe it or not I've been here for 29 years now. All the best.
Years ago, Art Bell (W6OBB and Coast to Coast AM) had a rhombic antenna on his property for 160m at I think 140ft. The voltages he was getting off that was incredible.
I remember that
Can you give more details?
@@goku445 not really, it was a long time ago and Art is dead.
Voltage is one thing, what kind of amperage was he getting?
@@atomicsmith wouldn't amperage imply current is flowing? The pressure difference from ground would be high, but there could be no amperge. Since you're getting no wattage out of the system the amps would have to be zero according to Watt's law.
Amazing job! This is a phenomenon I enjoy.
Once on the internet, I saw a video of people who had trucks with very tall poles attached to them driving up to a radio tower, and they saw plasma on the pole.
Also, I've seen people going up to radio towers and touching them with a blade of grass or ground wire, and being able to hear the radio station through the plasma.
My daughter and I had the pleasure of meeting this man today! What cool guy!!!
Thanks Jeff..🙂
That shot with moon on background during day was awesome, the rest of the video about RF waves energy was equally as awesome!
In addition to the RF field, we have the static electric field caused by atmospheric ionization etc. The field can be 100 V/m. That might be abe to add a DC to your finger too. A Multimeter would reveal what is coming out of there.
That's an interesting thought. Would you be able to switch between DC voltage and AC voltage to determine whether you are "receiving" RF or "static electricity, perhaps?
I'm only a hobbyist, so please, don't crucify me for my ignorance.
@@davidbrayshaw3529 Radio amateurs usually know this phenomenon and must fight against it. It has various components affecting. Some are noise-like impulses from ions hitting the antenna, some just static electricity
1.270 KHz... now that really would take a LOOOOOONG wire to resonate!
Yes, I caught that uncorrected error too. But his written math was correct, with the freq in MHz. 1270 KHz is what he meant to say.
Flying that wire made me want a Puffer Kite. They were around in the early to mid seventies. They were a balloon in the shape of a kite. You blew it up and go. We noticed the birds at 200 feet had wind but it was still on the ground. We got Mom to drive us to Woolworth and paid the man a dime to blow up our Puffer with helium. What a revelation! We could get up high enough to get into the wind. One day we had 750 feet of string stretched out. The kite was a tiny dot. You looked away and you would lose it.
Certainly miss those things.
Its always the small, seemingly irrelevant things you did as a child that youll end up missing the most after youve grown up
Qu'est ce qui t'empêche de faire ça maintenant?
Your English is kinda old fashion
I am from Alabama.
So technically English IS my second language.
Years back living in OKC local radio station KOMA 1520 had 3 broadcast antennas located south of the city in Moore OK, The home of the 2013 tornado that set record wind speed record of 318 MPH. Two of those antennas were eventually taken down by another tornado ending Years of broadcasting history. They used to claim people received the koma signal in two foreign countries and in the West half of the US. People living close to the 3 antennas complained they could hear the broadcast on their telephones. I think the power was 50,000 Watts. In the 60's KOMA and WKY both OKC stations used to rival each other playing the music of the time. Then FM came in . Good times old memories.
Beneath a 2 MW AM radio antenna with a coin proximating (or touch then maintain a one mm gap) to an iron pole it made an arch with the frequency of the radio broadcast, and you could hear the radio itself.
I recently installed a random Long Wire antenna, whose far end was close to the electrical lines that provide electricity to our homes, with the lines in our back yards !
On a whim, I attached a Green L.E.D. across the antenna lead to earth ground, and it does light the L.E.D. !
Moving the end if the wire away from the power lines, stops the lighting, proving in fact the electrical energy being inductively coupled to the wire !
Mind you, these are not extremely high voltage lines, where the induced voltages would be many times higher !
Your calluses are legendary. Never seen somebody so nonchalantly light their finger on fire.
So.... this might not actually be related to the power of the AM signal.
I think what's burning the holes in your skin is ground current, which is a literal dc current that all antenna have to deal with.
Every foot above the literal earth that your kite is flying is adding a potential difference to your antenna.
The exact potential depends on several factors, including the weather, your base altitude above sea level, the chemical composition in the dirt around you, and the type of wire you're running, but most early estimates put the ground potential to be around 10 volts per meter of height difference from the top of the antenna to earth ground.
There are ways to get this ground current to translate into usable energy, but it's usually not used that way.
It was still happening when the kite wasn't flying though
I like the video, it really will make someone wonder who hasn’t heard of there concepts before. I appreciate that type of video
used to make swimming pool liners that used RF energy to weld the plastic together - seeing this via a wire and a LED is simply fantastic :)
Never heard of this, only chemweld
Living here in interior Alaska, my first though was how much power would that kind of rig pull out of an Aurora.
Quite a bit actually.
The trans-Alaska pipeline has to have sacrificial anodes all along at least the above ground sections of the 800 mile pipe line. The segments of the pipeline are reportedly isolated from one another but apparently the currents induced are in the range of hundreds of amps!
Amazingly that's mostly static electricity as opposed to induced current from RF or atmospheric static electricity. In that case it's the fluid inside the pipe rubbing against the pipe itself. The same effect causes electrical charges to build up in water pipes as well. The current goes straight to ground but the charged metal oxidizes faster hence the sacrificial anodes.
@@brendanwood1540 that's so fascinating
Hundreds of amps?! Damn!
Nikola Tesla would approve.
I came here looking for this, or at least a similar, comment. 👍👍
I was thinking the same thing.
Yes, extracting a few mW from an antenna putting out several kW of power. Very nice... 🤪
Always the Tesla B's.
He'd add some capacitors resistors and a long antennae to a car with an electric motor and drive off using a single 12v lead acid battery😂
Only problem is, you are not considering the atmospheric energy that is a 100v every meter the kite is in the air, so in addition to the rf, you have static electricity
My spoken remark while watching the demonstration was, "How do you know that it is RF making the burns?" He did nothing to show that it was RF at all. If he was really close to the transmitter, then it certainly could be... but I would like to see a follow up that shows us a definitive source of the energy. putting a speaker between the LED and the fence would probably be sufficient to demod the local AM xmitter.
He put the wire on the ground and it was still working. Did you even watch the video?
@@Lothane95 yes, when he ran some LEDs off it . There is RF on the wire still when wire laying horizontally across the ground. But when elevated, it as the RF AND high voltage with 100 volts every meter.
1.270 kHz? Haven't seen anyone on the two hundred and thirty six thousand meter band in a while. Glad to have you!
You got one thing right. Strange is the proper word for this type of experiment
So cool!! Tesla was right... you can charge wirelessly over distance and it's a cool visual example of how electricity actually works through magnetic fields.
This is the princple of induction in action, discovered and documented by Faraday a few decades before Tesla was born. 🙂🙂
The problem is that you can "charge" also things that don't need/want energy 👍
(So, you don't have "control" over it, like you have with wires 👍)
It has been speculated that Tesla started a forest fire across the globe that way. I don't think it was provable though.
I love the lights idea. Brilliant.
Benjamin franklin is proud of your kite
Very cool, Tesla and Franklin all in one video.
Harming one's self for science . The best kind of experiment.
ElectroBOOM's ears are ringing
This is so cool. One of the reasons I love this hobby. Experiments like this.
No wonder my teeth glow at night.... Thanks Dave.
Pretty cool! I was putting up a discone antenna a few years ago and was very surprised when I got zapped by RF. Not burned, fortunately, but it was painful. It’s amazing how much energy is out there.
For sure. the RF energy travels on the outside of the skin, and the shock did sting.
This was a great video, I have always known the theory behind that effect but that’s the first time I’ve seen it demonstrated so well. Kudos
When you touch the wire pulling sparks, someone on the other side of the globe hears some clicks on the radio :-D
I doubt that, but I'm sure you might hear a few clicks on a near by AM radio, whenever I touched the grounded fence post.
Reinventing the first practical spark gap transmitters and receivers for radiotelegraphy communication developed by Guglielmo Marconi around 1896.
@@iviewthetube This is a receiver.
@@GrantsPassTVRepair Reminds me of a TV episode of the Brady Bunch when one of the kids got braces and could here the nearby radio station.
@@GrantsPassTVRepair The arcs turn it into a transmitter!
Back in the '70s my school was near a big AM transmitter. Working in the language labs meant being able to listen to Radio Clyde just by touching the appropriate knob on the equipment.
Gotta watch out for chain link fence ( especially new install), I've had fencing contractors auger holes for the up right poles and nick underground power lines. The Cement finisher trowling the sidewalk next to the fence get shocked pretty bad ( wet concrete and wire fence) had to call power company and dig up the damage. Didn't see that one coming. Cement guy now has curly hair 😂
Lucky to be alive.
Also very expensive mistake!
and thats why they tell you to call 811, its not just to be mean lol
@@dentron9885 AFAIK 811 is the suicide line! I think you meant to say 911.
why did i just have visions of ben franklin flying his kite, :D nice experiment dave, it would have been interesting to put a meter on it and see what kind of readings you got, such as how much current etc, you was pulling, keep up the great content!!!!
I agree. Perhaps in the future I can measure it.
\
I made my first lectenna from watching your short video a couple years ago, it still fascinates me. Thank you.
This was so simple but so informative.
When I was a kid I found a spool of fine copper wire and rigged it up across our house as an arial for my crystal set.
I got great reception.
One day I accidentally brushed against it and felt a 'tingle'.
Now, 60 years later, I learn that it wasn't my imagination.
Thank you. 👍👍👍
(When I told my father he didn't believe me, but made me take the wire down. 😪)
The shock you felt could have been from a radio station charging your antenna wire, but here's another possibility. ua-cam.com/video/_DHBjeobg4U/v-deo.html
I was going to make a comment about diodes probably not working for higher frequencies but I went though your other videos and found you talking about just that. This is one of those cases where you want the lowest max forward current, lowest reverse voltage, fastest recovery time diode you can get. Your 1SS86H is like 30mA forward current, 3V max reverse, 0.5V forward. The recovery time wasn't listed on the datasheet I found.
The higher the max forward I, the higher the diode capacitance.
The 1SS86 is the best diode I've found for this project for the higher frequencies, The RF energy is so strong in my neighborhood due to AM radio stations, that even two reversed biased LEDs will work, but their sensitivity is not very good. The 1N5711 was the second best I've used in these experiments so far.
Back in my ham days I was helping a friend put up a 40 meter dipole. He attempted a QSO while was still tying off the the leg of a radiating element to the insulator. RF burns are painful, his tube rig was backed by zero bias class AB2 dual 3500z linear amplifier. I hope I never again experience that
This is the coolest video I will watch all day. Thx for sharing.
I believe the arcing is electrostatic discharge like is utilized in corona motors. According to what I've heard, it will exist anywhere even if you weren't tuned to a nearby radio transmitter. The voltage gradient increases with elevation and can somehow be made to flow better with sharp points in the conductor that is elevated.
You need one of those big keys like Ben Franklin used.
This is just amazing stuff Grant. Nice experiment fella.
Thanks.
@@GrantsPassTVRepair I look forward to more great videos to come from you Sir. Thanks for the great work.
Looks like he heard the ice cream truck and decided on a short strategic cut for ice cream
Benjamin Franklin is proudly looking down upon you!
I solved my antenna issue in my garage with one of hose examples. The right lenght was the trick.
Thanks for the sharing this information with me.
I heard stories of back in the ol days of extremely high output AM stations local farmers near the tower would build a coil antenna just right length and attach it to a light bulb and light there barns for free.
That is really interesting. Thanks for sharing the discovery.
I just discovered this channel. I'm gonna have to watch the video you made about the antennas at the beginning. I've tried the exact same thing with an LED and a, I think around 7cm dipole just made out of 2 pieces of wire. I didn't have a reliable source for 2.4ghz, so I tried just moving it around my router, hoping it'd pick up enough power to do something. I've seen LEDs illuminate visibly with around 1nanoamp of current, so long as the forward voltage is reached. But I got absolutely nothing. So, I'll have to watch that and copy what you do, minus the transmitter. I would think there would be enough 2.4ghz noise to pick it up just about anywhere.
0:37
That would be MHz, not kHz. Also, using the power of a radio station locator website, that station at 1270 AM in your area (Grants Pass, Oregon - user names like yours make this hobby so easy!) is KAJO, a hit music station transmitting with 10 kW daytime ERP. However, the closest radio station frequency-wise in my area that 368 and a half feet of wire would be resonant to would be KZNS at 97.5 FM/1280 AM.
I think this is how the old world was powered.
There’s a dude on YT who showed he was listening to the radio broadcast just by touching the radio tower line with a long leaf plant. You could hear the music was coming through the plant itself. It was also burning doing so.
I stumbled upon this by complete chance. Radio communications and such isn't even a hobby or interest of mine... My exposure had been limited to using pac sets and radios when I was still a firefighter and medic. Well, it wasn't anyway. But now, I'm extremely interested! Thank you (I think? 😂)! Extremely interesting! Now I'm hungry for more! Cheers, friend!
And now subbed. 😅
There are local ham radio clubs that are great resources for learning more. You may enjoy this interview I made of a local ham radio operator. ua-cam.com/video/HSeuRiqWg-o/v-deo.html
Edgar Cayce mentioned a Tuaoi stone in a reading. It had been tuned too high N caused a great destruction. The Egyptians used some type of tuning forks.. just interesting when I heard you say it needs Tuned
Never heard that particular reading. I used to visit the Edgar Cayce Library in Virginia Beach on business trips years ago. I don’t know if it’s still there.
Dude, that’s awesome I love this kind of stuff I seen a video where a guy was able to drop power off of a high tension powerline. It was on his property and all he did is put a couple of wood poles in the ground and then ran a wire across The wood poles and I believe he had the wire grounded to earth and the other end, he was actually picking up quite a bit of electricity I just find that fascinating Of course I wouldn’t try that myself plus it’s probably stealing
Yes, it most certainly is stealing power, and they can detect that kind just as easily as if you connect with a wire to do it.
This is the coolest video on youtube THANK YOU
1/2 wave has minimums at the end. Try 5/8 or 1/4. I shouldn't need to explain to anyone who is transmitting. There's a velocity factor to take into consideration too. I've developed comms gear from HF to GHz and I'm an extra class operator.
Pretty cool. I liked the little dipoles with LEDs. :)
At the AM transmitter site when I used to be the assistant chief engineer we have a similar metal fence around the transmitter building. The building is between our two 300' towers, although I forget the distance that separates the towers...it's been over 25 years now. Anyway, during the day we run at 1,000 watts. And if you put your ear close to the fence you can hear the programming being broadcast right through the metal in the fence. I've never been shocked by the RF though.
I believe it. It would be interesting to create a small spark gap, and see if I could hear the audio.
I don't care what you call it. If you have an imagination coupled to the mindset of a Garage Engineer, then what you can create is only limited your motivation's! I love the idea's that sprout's from something so simple that it's very utilitarian!
Thank you for this video. I have video of a crane i was working on being energized. At the time i was shocked lol could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. Also screwed up my phone while trying to record the video.
1/2 wavelength antenna requires a dipole in middle. Theortically 1/2 wavelength really long wire should cancel out, since the standing wave should be max at the 1/4, min at the 1/2 wavelength
actually an end fed half wave (which is just an extreme case of off-center fed dipole if you think about it) is a practical working antenna, with a caveat of having really high impedance, high voltage and low current on the feed point.
however in this case, he's harvesting electricity between the antenna and a ground, so it may be as well a quarter-wave monopole (half of a dipole, at half the frequency), with the ground acting as "the other half"
Nice experiment, Ben!
And thats why I would put terminators on coaxial wires that were attached to wall plates for Uverse Coaxial installs
Wow. impressive!!... i've been experimenting with few aerials... but have never seen that!!
I actually experienced this a few years ago and it was during a power cut I was looking for a torch in the kitchen draws we had a old set of fairy lights ever so slightly each led was lit up I was mesmerised but thought I was going crazy as it had no batteries and told absolutely nobody
You're also getting atmospheric potential too. 120v/meter on a clear day, or thereabouts.
Mathematically challenged for sure. I've had radios, have radios, worked in radio 15 years but I've never been able to understand or work equations for antennas. All I know about radio innards is don't touch the capacitor. It amazes me to see things like this! I look and listen and love it but it still feels like I'm watching a foreign movie without subtitles. LoL. But really cool!
If you get too close to the radio transmitter you can actually end up with a reduction in power because you are in the near field and not far field, and coupling to the antenna can reduce.
Oklahoma in the 90s had a really powerful am radio station. My dad told me stories that random things like appliances, the walls, and even the toilet would very quietly broadcast the KOMA jingle
This is the method Mahlon Loomis used for the original wireless setup, both receiving and radiating antennas. But he didn't know anything about Hertzian waves and resonance, or even that AC was involved. He just knew it worked if the kites were at the same height. Of course that would make the wires the same length, but he thought he was tapping into a horizontal DC current at a given altitude with a ground return. In reality he was creating r.f. transients at the transmitting end by keying it to ground, and detecting it at the other end with a spark gap. The power was the sky-to-ground potential (as demonstrated by Ben Franklin) whose capacitance he was transiently shorting out, and the long wire provided resistance and inductance.
I saw and heard something like this once! Walking in a park near a small radio tower (for a lighthouse) I could hear cumbia music playing from the chain link fence. Thought I was hearing things but I put my ear to the fence and it was like a speaker!
Cool story. I would not be at all surprised.
Try it miles away from any radio stations. Difference of potential can be had just from the distance of the start and end points of that wire if it is long enough. Difference of potential creates current.
Good idea.
@@GrantsPassTVRepair
I picked that up from one of Don Smith’s videos. There are potential voltages from 50,000 to 1.5 million in the air depending on time of day and solar flares.
This is also in one of Tesla’s patent using a high aerial antenna, capacitors and ground connection.
@@chasson321 I hope to try this again in an isolated area.
I had a random wire antenna in central Florida that got quite zappy when storms were building in the area (like most days around Tampa) - now I’d have a discharge unit hooked to it but then… it packed quite a wallop on 59 feet of wire up 25 feet. I eventually hooked a Neon bulb up to it to reduce charge, it flashed at around 1-2 hz
I also have a long wire antenna that does this whenever there is a good charge in the air. This is a video of it. ua-cam.com/video/_DHBjeobg4U/v-deo.html
I've been writing a video similar to this. Trying to find a way for free energy. Now this video. i see a genius above a genius. This channel and ones like it needs high views and the support. You know this is the way we can help everyone. Sharing. If all in the world learns this like this video teaches. 🤔. Well that's the mass and it is in control even though it doesn't seem like it.
This explains why we used to have "free energy" that is "no more."
@ 2:45
Ican hear the ice cream man!!!!
Perfect timing!!
Awesome content, no wasted time, Ben Franklin be proud.
This was gnarly!!
That is flipping incredible…
On a receive antenna?!!!!! I always thought that transmitting antennas were the ones that burned you. Receiving signals, you aren’t transmitting any rf. The station had to be putting out immense amounts of power if you were able to get an rf burn. Guess with antennas being electrical, that explains why you can get burned. But wow.
Keep in mind the AM radio station is only a few blocks away from this park,
And the consequence for your local AM stations are a massive transmitter power consumption, even though you're drawing just a few Watts. Because of the losses on its way to you.
Be neat to see slightly different wire lengths and the effect on the led.
When i was a kid (and dumb), I decided to key up a CB radio with no antenna connected, and instead my finger over the SO238 antenna connector. I got an RF burn on my fingertip that resembled the connector. It hurt a lot and I do not recommend.
😂
fun fact utility companies have to drive ground rods in their cable storage areas and connect the ends of the KV cable spools to them so they don't accumulate a deadly charge from the sun's microwave output.
Interesting. I didn't realize the sun was producing microwaves that effected the power distribution.
That is freaking WILD! Thanks for sharing!
Love it man. Good vid
Thanks.
What is the furthest you can be from the radio antenna for this to still work?
I'm not sure how far this will work, but using a 200 foot long wire my LED is very bright about a mile from the AM radio station that uses 5000 watts in the day time. This video may interest you. ua-cam.com/video/vHVmJ5lD9jc/v-deo.html
Love your starship stream
The inverse square law applies, so not very far actually.
*I used a 1000 foot wire using over 300 different capacitors and run a 1/4 hp motor with the energy for months until a lightning strike burned down my home!*
I'll be experimenting with kite-lifted antennas when the weather warms up a bit in NJ. Many times I see just wire as the antenna, and then a high value bleeder resister to ground for just this purpose. But what if I'm using an end fed with a matching box, and cox? That's the equivalent of the long wire in my backyard for normal use. I should ground my tuner for sure.
I tried this experiment using my kenwood transciever with no matching box, and all I could pick up on every band was the local radio station no matter where I tuned.