On 25/04/2014 22:22, Steve Matzura wrote: > That damn thing was so strong, our radio instructor told a story of a > guy who built flashlights which could be WABC-powered. How's that > possible, you may ask? A simple diode circuit to turn radio frequency > energy into low-level current to power a flashlight bulb if you're > close enough to the transmitter.
There are several, possibly apocryphal, reports of people using power extracted from high-power transmitters to provide free electricity, and being prosecuted for doing so (the offence of "Theft of Electricity" is genuine, though usually used in cases where people have bypassed their meter or used an outlet belonging to someone else); see for example http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3336114/Over-to-you-Mythical-electricity.html or http://tinyurl.com/yetwu7k . Whether one could extract sufficient power to work filament lamps or other equipment is dubious, but it is certainly possible to use RF fields to power flourescent tubes. -- rgds LAurence <>< ...Node: Was aware of. The past tense of "know." ---Taglines by Tagzilla (tagzilla.mozdev.org)
