Man, I wish I had a setup like yours TK... this Android barely let me make any decent shot at all... had help from the clouds, though (they thinned out in time for the show).

@polln8r

That's not bad for the camera you've got... you can definitely tell there's an eclipse going on! It was a non-event here, too close to sundown. A little cropping, some adjusting in Gimp or PixInsightLE.... and you've got a keeper !

I hope it's clear in early June for the transit of Venus. You might be able to catch that yourself if you can make a good pinhole camera.

Meanwhile, back at the DeepBunker....

I've looked at the SCRN0235 shot. This is the one where there is apparently a relatively long duty cycle like 50 percent, 72 volts in the battery stack, and something around 5 amps DC flowing according to the scopeshot during the gate HI portion of the cycle.

I decided to try this and see if the Q1 mosfet could take the strain. Unfortunately my batteries are kind of flat. I can manage 72 volts but with the high current they sag a bit. I was able to get 5 amps at first while I still had the voltage, though, and I've bolted a thermocouple to the mosfet's heatsink. It very quickly gets very hot carrying that much current. I am surprised though... I have actually gotten it to about 170 degrees C for a short time and it is still working. I know the thermocouple is right because the thing burned my fingers when I touched it, and the plastic of the cable connector smoked a little bit.

My waveforms don't look quite exactly like the ones in SCRN0235 though. I wonder if this is because my batteries are weaker, or what.
I set this all up with meters in view, to video a run-until-failure for the hot mosfet, but I want to use more full batteries to do it.

Anyone know where I can get a 666 timer chip? Digi-Key doesn't see to carry it. I'm trying to build the new and improved version of the Ainslie circuit. I have placed a link to the schematic below:

http://xkcd.com/730/

Derrick:

That's actually another reproduction of the first Ainslie circuit that was done by a leading member of the free energy community from a few years back.  The clips might still be on YouTube!

MileHigh