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Anyone ever mess around with an AM radio at night?

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Ha! Listening & playing with AM/FM & shortwave radios when I was 10 is what started my career ... that & living in the middle of no where & the smallest kid in my class + no depth perception (lousy at catching fly balls :'().

I did the long wire antenna thing but strung it around the ceiling of my bedroom. Lightning could get pretty scary in the season. Coupled it into my radios with another loop antenna scavenged out of another radio. Had a variable cap used to help tune it and it would still get some arcs across the platesD: during lightning storms.
 
PsiStar said:
Ha! Listening & playing with AM/FM & shortwave radios when I was 10 is what started my career ... that & living in the middle of no where & the smallest kid in my class + no depth perception (lousy at catching fly balls :'().

I did the long wire antenna thing but strung it around the ceiling of my bedroom. Lightning could get pretty scary in the season. Coupled it into my radios with another loop antenna scavenged out of another radio. Had a variable cap used to help tune it and it would still get some arcs across the platesD: during lightning storms.
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If you run an isolated radiator and have a strongly capacitive transmission line it's not uncommon to measure tens of kV on the driven element on a dry day! As a thunderstorm approaches, better watch out and make sure the spark gaps are set properly or destructive downstream flashovers will occur and wreck a lot of transmitter gear instantly.
 
Hmmm wonder if one could perhaps harvest some of the lightning's energy this way. I'm guessing this idea has been done a million times though, and probably fails.
 
It's like storing any other static potential. Losses are extremely high and devices need a CW supply. A VDG genny probably supplies the most steady state of "static" power but its output is extremely sensitive to its operating environment as well. You'd spend more energy maintaining the ambient relative humidity, for example. 😉
 
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