RE: 50kva Jacob's Ladder

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com> 



Please post some pictures of this set-up for us.  I'd like to see what
this beast actually looks like.
Dan

 > Tried building a giant jacob's ladder with 50 kva worth  of
 > pigs (25 kva on
 > each electrode, 34.5 kv each antiphase to each other (in
 > essence 69kv))
 > without hardly any limiting (except the tiny leakage
 > inductance) and with
 > the tops removed to keep them from exploding. Don't know what
 > the actual
 > power draw was, but it was popping 800A worth of breakers in
 > 5 seconds or so
 > (made the drop wire from the pole quite warm in the process).
 > The arc spread
 > over 17 feet before the breakers popped (which was over 4"
 > thick and bright
 > as a welder, which made it hard to look at directly without
 > looking at it
 > through dark glasses or a trash bag "lens"). The local
 > utility of the town
 > of 1300 at the time (Stanberry, MO) actually went and asked
 > all the major
 > machine shops/welders/factories what they were running. They were not
 > particularly amused when the eventually found out that the
 > brownouts were
 > coming from my backyard, not to mention the local population
 > being annoyed
 > that they're electronics were shutting drown from too much
 > voltage drop.
 > Didn't think that utilities were that sensitive considering
 > thinks like
 > partical accelerators and fusion reactors pull 50MW for
 > minutes at a time at
 > the flip of a switch. I certainly hope that I'm not the one
 > responsible for
 > the blackout back in August....