Earth Electrical Energy Datalogging Experiments

[tishatang]

Jeanna and all

Here are some links to basic stuff re resonant circuits.

http://www.vias.org/basicradio/wrapnt_resonant_circuits39.html

Click on series and parallel resonance circuits and also on Q to get an understanding of the subject.

Parallel circuits that have variable tuning have been used since before the crystal radio was invented.  This raises the feeble input by factor equal to the Q of the circuit assuming zero losses.
this means that if the EB is putting out 1 volt and the Q of the circuit is 50, then you now have 50 peak volts at the resonant freq.  It is fairly easy to get a Q of 50 homemade circuits.  Using more sophisticated techniques can get Q of 200 and above.

For Freepow not to get higher readings indicates something is wrong.  These circuits work with only microwatts of power in radio reception and here with an EB, we have milliwatts of power, much more power to work with.  We just have to know the parameters to get it working.  To get no increase in voltage either the circuit was shorted out or a cheap meter was used that to get a reading, more power was sucked out than the circuit was capable of providing.  You must use a high impedance meter or a scope.  If the circuit was constructed wrong, maybe there was no Q to begin with?

We do not have to get into radio theory to try something out.  Find an old radio that has a variable air tuning capacitor and take it out of the radio.  Or, buy one on ebay or someplace.  If you want to work in the high freq range wind about 20 turns or so around the top of the carbon rod of the EB.  Continue to wind a bunch of coils coming out from the rod into the air before you connect the air capacitor to it.  Connect the other end of the cap to the metal rod in the ground.  You now have a parallel resonant circuit setup with variable tuning.  If you want to tap the low freq spectrum, wind the coils around the metal rod and use the carbon rod as the ground point.  Metal core coils will not allow high freq due to losses.

Notice that in the photos of Stubblefield, he has many turns of wire as a helix cable between the phone and other connections.  This is a high Q inductor.  I would guess the Q to be at least 200?  If the EB is a capacitor, then he has a High Q parallel resonant circuit that is tunable by unwinding coils off one end of the helix cable.  He probably has 30 volts available at the earphone if he does not load the system down too much?  Straightening the unwound coils changes the inductance thereby changing the freq of resonance.  I hope you understand what I am saying to get the picture in your mind?

I have somewhere a link to some crystal radio circuits that self power a transistor.  I think this will allow the ability to separate the load from destroying the resonance?  Maybe also to couple two EB's together?  At the very least to raise the input signal out of the noise to get decent scope readings.
Look to next post.

[tishatang]

Here are links to free-power crystal radio circuits.

http://www.crystalradio.net/crystalplans/

Scroll down to #153 Free Power Radios.  Here is page two of three showing the circuits.  File too big to attach.  You will have to download.

http://www.crystalradio.net/crystalplans/xximages/Free2.JPG

Circuit two is said to be optimized for capturing 60 cycle  ambient energy.  Probably it is tuned to a harmonic of 60 hz?  Circuit three is to capture all stray energy.  I am not a circuit techie, so i cannot answer questions of a technical nature on how to hookup or modify anything.  All I can do is give a general idea.

The output is the headphone connections.  This will be our source for the scope or another EB.  Circuit three seems the best because it takes a portion of the output and feeds it back into the beginning giving a positive feedback to increase the power.  It might be possible to increase the feedback so that it goes into self-oscillating mode. 

As an experiment, I would suggest that we try and connect two EB's together by the following method.  Wind the inductor as a bifilar pair.  Maybe you can buy a small spool of two conductor speaker wire or lamp cord wire and slip the spool over the end of the rod in the ground.  An option would be to cut one side of the spool off and slip the coil of wire out of the plastic spool.  Then carefully wind some turns tightly around the rod and then splay out the rest of the coils to resemble the helix cable of stubblefield.  The two sets of rods in the ground will be coupled together by the mutual inductance of the bifilar coil.  One set of rods is parallel resonant and the other rod set is series resonant.  Tune them both to the same freq and see what happens.

Maybe we can raise both volts and amps?  Maybe one EB will prime the earth giving more power out of the second EB?

For those of you who are radio savvy, eliminate the diode that demodulates the signal making the circuit a radio.  This diode is converting the AC into DC and is throwing away half your power.

Hope this helps,
Tishatang

[freepow]

  For those who have seen my graph of output power from my antenna+ground a few posts ago,
well usually it wont drop below 4.8 volts AC at night or early morning, well today Monday it was raining and I checked power output tonight(Monday-night-Australian-time) and output was very low at only...
3.9 volts and .02 mA, why I have no idea, must be something to do with the weather ?
Any comments
If it is recieving energy from power lines in our back yard...Then why would it drop that much just because it was a dull wet day

[freepow]

My output has changed slightly from my EB, on Monday night... at .95 volts DC and rising slowly and
2.53 mA.

[jeanna]

Wow tishatang,
I haven't even visited the links yet, and I want to thank you for that explanation.

My earth battery/Stubblefield combination is almost there, and I think you have pointed the way for me to get the volts/amps higher.
Now, I need to go find out what Q is again! 

thank you,

jeanna