Howdy folks,
Well, I bit (past tense of "I'll bite") so I made one of these things
and tested it. It does work, as Miklos Borbas says, but some things need
to be addressed here.
1. The power supply I used outputs 10 - 30kVDC at around 5mA. Higher
current is available, but I limit it to this to be safe, and besides,
this device does not need even 5mA. Frequency and duty cycle are
variable. (pulsating DC, please note) It was set at 1.7kcps at the time,
so I used that. Using 60cps didn't make much of a difference in
performance, what little decrease there was I would attribute to the
fact that I used a 1000pF filtering capacitor in all the tests, and
obviously, it is going to like higher frequencies better. 8kcps didn't
make a difference either.
2. With no plastic covers (Miklos' ping pong balls), it works like an
electric pinwheel, just like we used to run from a Wimshurst machine, at
which point everyone was amused.
3. Cover the ends of the wires on the pinwheel with plastic spheres (or
cubes, in my case) and thrust is zero, or bloody near.
4. Put "corona wires" fanning out from the axis of rotation of the
pinwheel, about 3 inches below it, and pointed so that they emit
radially, and not tangentially (so they contribute little to any
wind-caused thrust) and the thing begins spinning in the opposite
direction as before, towards the charged face of the plastic "covers".
5. Aim the corona wires toward the faces of the plastic covers on the
pinwheel, and the thing spins faster. You can hear the corona at this
point, and things around the device readily pick up a charge.
6. Put a plastic bag around the thing, one HV wire going into the top
from straight above, opposite HV supply wire going into the bottom of
the bag from straight below, and the device still rotates, but reduced
somewhat. Move your hand within 12-18 inches of the bag, and the device
will turn to chase your hand. It will also chase metal placed near it,
plastic, styrofoam, just about anything.
7. Smoke isn't moved around very much by this device. It is reasonably
clear that most of the thrust is a field interaction with the
surroundings, air and what have you.
8. If you look at this thing linearly, it is basically a fancy lifter.
You have a covered, non-emitting electrode (the pinwheel with the ping
pong balls/cubes) that serves only to establish a field around itself,
and you have a sharp wire that ionizes the surrounding air/medium, and
it is then pulled towards the covered electrode. I'll bet this would
even work in oil, as the lifters do, but I have no desire to dunk it in
a bucket of SAE 30.
9. If anyone would like me to try a few other simple things, time
permitting, I probably can, but I don't plan to spend much more time on
this. I looked at it hoping maybe something oddball was going on, it
doesn't look like there is, so I'm going to go back to other things that
do act oddball.
10. This is a very good example of why I quit doing much with any form
of propulsion research that involved these kinds of voltages....the
field effects and ion effects make trying to separate a possible genuine
thing from all the artifacts a horrible nightmare.
Some more below, replying to Michel:
Michel Jullian wrote:
Now you mention it, why couldn't you get a net thrust in a vacuum if the
rotating arm was emitting electrons to ground?
You can, but it's quite weak. Crooke used this in his (once) famous
railway tubes. Measurements reveal that it is still action-reaction
compliant. (damn it.)
It is only the effect of a gradient on the
virtual current that can produce true net thrust. BTW, I don't think
that is a Biefeld Brown effect is it? Isn't his effect based on DC
capacitors? I'm not up on his stuff.
Those things are DC capacitors indeed, albeit leaky ones. If they didn't leak
there would be no thrust most probably.
Leaky doesn't even begin to describe these things. :) It's less a
capacitor than an "electronic faucet".
In any case, I got my daily dose of ozone. Smells like a thunderstorm
cruised through the lab.
P.S., the power supply I am using is not flyback based, as the good
flybacks are scarcer than hen's teeth these days, and not very powerful
in any event. The heart of my supply is basically an induction coil with
a ferrous core that can be moved in and out and separated to give a
variable air gap to the magnetic circuit. I'm reluctant to explain
exactly how to make it, given the "standards" some of the lifter guys
use when experimenting. In other words, I don't want to give
instructions to the uninitiated on how to flame broil themselves.
--Kyle
