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.
Another electrical arc on youtube
May 31, 2007
1 Replies
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John
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.
(Remove the two Roentgen-ray characters to reply.)
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