Another electrical arc on youtube

This one is pretty interesting. The antenna switch gear from a high power transmitter fails and causes a destructive arc. The station is brodcasting program material at the time and the music is heard from the arc. The pictures at the end show the melted down switchgear.

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John

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JohnR66
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Just what I used to do about forty years ago. There was a 25 kW medium wave transmitter the antenna being guyed with eight wires attached to four concreted beds on the ground. Each wire had a few insulators between the antenna and the beds. The last insulator was located near the concrete bed. I used to climb on one of the concrete stands and short circuit this last insulator with a thin copper wire. A stable arc with length about 5 mm was produced (frequency was 1242 kHz), the copper melted slowly and the sound from the arc was the AM program they were sending. If I accidentally touched the guy wire above the insulator, I got a small but painfull burn on my skin.

Despite those foolhardy experiments I managed to survive and later became an engineer in electronics. When I've told this story about a radio consisting only a piece of copper wire to my colleagues, they have not been able to believe a word of it. Perhaps I should use this video and try to teach them something about electricity.

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SeppoX

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