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Re: Spark Propadation

Subject:  Re: Spark Propadation
  Date:   Thu, 17 Apr 1997 13:14:39 -0500
  From:   "Robert W. Stephens" <rwstephens-at-headwaters-dot-com>
    To:    Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>


> 
> Last summer I read an artical that says sun light and heat can help to 
> transmit radio waves.  The artical explained that when the sun is very
> low on the horizon the light and heat from the sun are about as close to
> parallel to the earths surface as they will get and radio waves can be
> helped along.  It had some examples and I decided to try it for myself. 
> I designed and built a bean antenna for channel 7 TV station and put it
> on a pipe 10' above the roof.  When the sun was very low I pointed the
> antenna into the sun and tried for 15 minutes to pick up any TV station
> I could.  I was about to give up when I picked up a station.  It got
> stronger and stronger until it was very clear just like a local
> station.  An advertisement came on then a news program that anounced the
> time, TV station, and the name of the town located in California.  HAY,
> thats over 2000 miles away.  After a few minutes the station faded away.
> 
> My question is.  If heat and light will help the transmition of radio
> waves can it be used in some way to help make the TC sparks longer?
> 
> Next. I found a microwave oven at the scrap yard.  After putting some
> jumper wires across the door switch, the ON/OFF switch and a few other
> things it got it to come on.  I removed the case and removed the end
> cover on the wave guide.  I aimed the wave guide at a slice of bread
> stuck on the wall with a thumb tack.  It warmed the bread up very fast. 
> I put the bread about 10' away and it still got warm with the wave guide
> aimed at the bread.  I aimed the wave guide at a bird house 20' away in
> the yard and waited for a bird to 
> come.  When the bird came I turned ON the microwave.  After about 2
> seconds the bird fell off its pirch like a rock and about 3' from the
> ground it came back to life and flew away.  I aimed the microwave across
> the top of the TC toroid and turned them both on.  The microwave beam
> does not seem to help transmit sparks threw the air.  I can not see any
> change in the sparks.  
> 
> My question is.  Is there any way to make sparks transmit threw the air 
> longer than normal using something like an electronic beam.  Laser beam? 
> Light beam?  Different frequency microwave beam?  Hot air beam?
> 
> I replaced the TC toroid with an pie pan.  I turned on the TC and I am 
> getting about 32" sparks from the edges of the pie pan.  Lots of
> splitting multiple sparks.  No sparks from the top.  Next I put a small
> amount of alcohol in the pie pan and set it on fire.  The alcohol burned
> with a low blue 3" flame with lots of heat rising up from the pie pan. 
> I turned on the TC and got the same 32" multiple splitting sparks from
> the edge of the pie pan.  I also got some awsom sparks going straight up
> in the flames. The sparks seem to make the flames get longer.  The
> flames appear to be about 12" tall now.  The flames help conduct the
> sparks.  The sparks are about 15 or 16" about the pie pan.  The sparks
> are so strange I'm not sure I can explain what they look like.  Emagine
> a large ball of steel wool the diameter of the pie pan shaped like a
> flame 16" tall except the steel wool is really sparks. 
> 
> I put birthday candles spaced 1/2" apart on the 12' long 2x4 board. I
> set the board on top of the TC secondary coil.  I light all the candles.
> With the TC on sparks run the full length of the board threw the flames.
> Spark are jumping out of the flames in all direction like it does from
> the toriod.
> 
> Gary Weaver    Experement 7928

Gary,

In your post title you misspelled 'Trepidation'!
People like YOU who ask the kinds of questions you pose, while
attempting the 
kinds of dangerous experiments you are playing with, make people like 
ME... very nervous.

I'm glad I'm not an immediate neighbour in a wood and plasterboard
apartment 
building, or a bird.  For goodness' sake, be careful, and watch 
where you point that thing!  If dropping birds in flight with high 
power microwave beams turns you on, you should try to get a job at one
of the 
military's BMEWS (Ballistic Missle Early Warning System) stations in 
Alaska.

The television reception phenomenon you experienced was probably the 
effect known as ducting.  The air can form stratified layers which 
are marked by air of different densities.  By refraction, short 
wavelength radio waves like VHF-UHF TV and centimeter microwave waves 
at low grazing angles can be caught between these boundaries and 
propagate a very long way as though in a metallic waveguide, even 
around the curvature of the earth.  I've personally seen this effect 
very prominently at 4 GHz with a portable C-band satellite TV 
receiver and an LNA mounted on a small horn and tripod stand while 
doing interference surveys.  4 GHz is also employed by the telephone 
companies for point-to-point microwave between repeater towers spaced 
30-40 miles apart.  If you try to set up a C-band TVRO receiver in the
path
of a Telco repeater you can forget about good TV reception.  In my case
I
picked up a Telco generated TV signal from a repeater tower a couple of
hundred
miles away, way beyond the line-of-sight horizon.  I know this was
ducting 
as my antenna gain was insufficient by orders of magnitude to have
received this
signal by the other possible mode at this medium distance which is
called
Tropospheric Scatter.

Gary, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but if you re-read your 
post objectively, you gotta see that you have come across sounding just
like
an accident waiting to happen.

Protected somewhat by the square law to indescriminate microwave
bombardment up here in coiling heaven.
rwstephens