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.
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.)
