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Shrinking Coins

If you have a couple of high voltage capacitors laying around the garage you can shrink coins in your spare time. Delight the neighborhood kids, frighten their parents, and put yourself on a TSA list. Take a look at this video to see how it’s...

Lightning Technologies High Voltage Lab

Andy Plumer of Lightning Technologies provides a behind the scenes look at their high voltage test facility. The Marx generator is capable of producing over 2 million volts and can create high voltage sparks several meters long. The metal rings at the top of the blue generator prevent the generator from sparking to the ceiling. The tall thin white column is a voltage measuring device. In the following video there are several tests to a small aircraft model of a Boeing 747. The sparks are so quick that the video camera can barely capture them....

Behind the Scenes – High Voltage Lab

Dr. Ian Cotton provides a guided tour of the University of Manchester high voltage facility. This is the largest university facility in the U.K. and is pretty advanced. This type of facility is used for high voltage testing of radomes and diverter strips along with power industry components. Everything in this lab works in hundreds of thousand of volts – more than enough to kill you. The flashover testing of high voltage insulators is really impressive....

Metal Bar Radome Diverter Damaged By Lightning

So, you would think that the metal bar (solid bar) diverters used on radomes are pretty much immune to lightning. They’ve been lightning tested, right? Well, they have been lightning tested. But testing can’t represent all the possible variations in lightning current. The following site shows the result of a lightning strike to an Airbus radome which dislodged the solid copper diverter. http://avherald.com/h?article=412b8215 If the bar comes off the radome it is pretty much a roulette game; red it flies by the aircraft, black it hits something important, like the pilot. Are there ways to keep the metal bars attached to the radome? Sure, you can increase the bar thickness until it has the cross-section of a Volkwagen and you can attach them with rivets left over from the Titanic. But that increases drag. And weight. And cost. The smart move is to use a WXGuard segmented diverter. Light weight, aerodynamic, and no fasteners to install. Call WXGuard at 1-800-543-5151 today for more...

Lightning Testing of Composites

This video from the BBC shows a 200,000 Ampere lightning test to a piece of unprotected carbon fiber composite structure. Lightning guru Chris Jones of BAE Systems in Warton, U.K. provides the engineering commentary. As you will see, carbon fiber does conduct lightning currents but it doesn’t like it....

Flying Through Thunderstorm In Iraq

The following is a great video of U.S. troops flying through a thunderstorm in Iraq. The electrical activity is amazing. The electric fields in the thunderstorm help create bright static discharges on the windshields. The pilots seem very calm while lightning strikes are occurring all around...

Lightning Testing of Car

If you haven’t heard of the BBC hit show Top Gear you are really missing out on a lot of automotive fun. In the following link the boys take a VW Golf to a lightning test facility and strike it with 600,000 volts. Does the Golf go up in smoke? Take a look and find out….....

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