I always thought about mounting a super soaker with a highly conductive liquid on top of my coil. Wouldn't exactly be able to hit a plane, but it could probably go tens of feet at a targeted object. Salt water would probably work. I have a jar full of mercury, but I don't wanty to waste it, and it's so dense, the range would be limited, without a home-made presurized gun.
On Friday, February 23, 2018, 2:43:18 AM EST, Steve White <steve.white1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I suffered through the series just to see the actual tesla coil stuff which was perhaps about 5 minutes of each show. Most of this program was the typical tesla conspiracy theory nonsense which you could guessed from the title of the series. It was amusing to watch because the "investigators" would find some scrap of paper that tesla drew that would show something completely normal to all of us like a big tesla coil tower and they would act like they just discovered the Rosetta Stone. In one show they found a picture of grounding methods and acted like it was the Holy Grail. Then they would speculate endlessly about conspiracies based on almost nothing. It was all quite a bit of nonsense.
The parts that were worth watching (5 minutes per program) was an actual tesla coil builder attempting to build what they were calling the "Death Ray". Basically, what the coiler built was a large tesla coil combined with a capacitor discharge system. He had a bank of very large pulse capacitors which he would charge and then discharge through a streamer plasma path that the tesla coil had established to a grounded target. The streamer would then strike the grounded object and destroy it. At least this is what it looked like to me. Of coarse this would never work in practice for many reasons: you can't steer the streamer, the flying target isn't grounded, a huge bank of pulse capacitors would be required to destroy an actual aircraft, limited range, and probably many more reasons. It was impressive though that the coiler figured out a way to discharge thousands of joules from a capacitor bank through a streamer generated by a tesla coil to a grounded target.
I was wondering throughout the series if the tesla coil builder was a member of TCML. He probably is but I haven't been following TCML enough recently to know all of the major names. Unfortunately I can't remember his name. I have a feeling he was holding back the laughter every time the 2 overheated "investigators" engaged him in conversations about Tesla conspiracy theories and such. He was probably thinking "the Science Channel is paying me to build this thing and I get to keep all of the cool equipment after it is all over so I will play along with these jokers". I must confess that I missed the final episode where they were supposed to demonstrate the "Death Ray". I will have to catch the re-run.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Leyh" <lod@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 9:20:07 PM
Subject: [TCML] Death Ray?
Hi All,
Recently there was some program either on the Science or History Channel
where they tried to replicate Tesla's 'Death Ray.' I don't have cable
so I haven't seen it, but have seen a few still images. It kinda looks
like a mini-Electrum with a curly breakout point.
Anyone know the deal? What did they actually build?
Cheers,
Greg
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