Jes Ascanius Radiant collector

[thx1138]

Newer circuit boards

Please, please read the AscaniusCircuitBoards.doc file contained in the ZIP file. There is updated info there about how to connect multiple boards. The 12" X 14" boards are included in this file also. To keep the current traversing any individual board down so it won't damage the traces use an external bus wire or bar sized to carry the total current of all modules and connect each board to the bus individually. Keeping the trace size down allows more modules to be laid out on each board.

AscaniusCircuitBoards-B.zip

I had cataract surgery on one eye today so I'll be out for a couple of days and answer any questions hopefully Thursday or Friday.

[T62]

Can you be more specific please ?

Your schematis is wrong, the ground is connected thry D2, and all power coming from the aerial will go to the ground.
wait a min.
All here are using, a germanium diodes, and 1N type
1N34A............................
GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS

Peak Inv. Voltage(PIV): 60 Volts
Max. Average Rectified Current: 50mA @ 25 deg C
Junction Temperature (TJ): 100 deg C Max.
FWD Voltage Drop(VF): 1.0V @ 5.0 mA
Reverse Current: IR 15uA @ VR 10 volts
.......................................
1N4148
IF 200ma
Vr 100v.
......................................
And all here are using a PLATE.......WHY.
If you want a sucess "YOU NEED a WIRE"..........
------------------------------------------------------
How is done..
First you need a metal plate well worked on drebong machine.
Or just use an old speaker, and remove magnet, juse just metal coil, Larger is better. Now wound a 2mm wire, to fill the all metal coil to the top, 200-500 turns, depends on coil.
Second build a pcb with elements like in picture.
--------------------------------------------
Important: Do not use a 1N34 germanium or 1N4148 diodes, coz there are a low power diodes, you can not expect good result whit them.
Use Fast or Super fast diodes with more power.
Example: BYV29SI-D 500V7.4A<50ns, or
SF3006PT SuperFastDiode400V30A 35nsTO247AD,
or BYV32 2xSI-D 200V20A/230Ap25n, use only 2 of them(2 diodes in one case).
NOW you can expect an good result with voltage and amperage without droping.
Experiment with turns, more turns of the coil=more voltage, more thick wire=more amperage
.................
And final when you assemble all, you do not need to climb the coil higher of the ground.
Best regards from Macedonia..

Hi Tesla ReGen,

I just read your message and directly build your scheme. But my results are poor. So I guess I am doing something wrong...

Please tell me what you mean by "a metal plate well worked on drebong machine"
Or if I use an old speaker, do I wind on the speaker ? Perhaps you can post an image ?
I made a coil using a piece of cardboard - I guess that is not right ?

BT

T62

[thx1138]

Photodiode

The "trick" to the Ascanius circuit is that the 1N34 diodes are also photodiodes. They respond to light. They respond to a wide spectrum - 400nm to 1700nm - which covers the spectrum from near infrared to ultraviolet. So in essence, what you have is a photovoltaic circuit. Wrap them in black electrical tape and check your readings.

Photodiode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is an interesting reference there also
Photomultiplier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[wrtner]

Please read AscaniusCircuitBoards.doc included in the ZIP file. Opening the files requires the ExpressPCB software. There is a link in the AscaniusCircuitBoards.doc file.

Download from here: AscaniusCircuitBoards.zip

I can't get this link to work. Is it available anywhere else?

[thx1138]

I can't get this link to work. Is it available anywhere else?

Not right now. It did, however, work for me in both the original post and your quote of it. This is a better one from post #136:
AscaniusCircuitBoards-B.zip

Both of them should take you to a filesnack web page from which you click and go through whatever download procedure your browser uses. Then unzip it to a folder. It requires downloading and installing the ExpressPCB software to view and/or modify the files that can be found here:
ExpressPCB - Free PCB layout and schematic software

[thx1138]

Anamolous readings

I started getting anamolous readings back in June so backed off of this project. It has finally occurred to me why that happened.

I am in the northern hemisphere and my setup is on the north side of my house. That means it is in shade most of the year. But during the summer the sun gets more directly over head and it is no longer in shade. That has
two affects.

First, the heat from the sun on the dielectric enveloping the elevated plate raises its resistance which reduces its ability to capture charge. That would also occur somewhat, but to a lesser extent, even if it were shaded by some type of awning just because of the higher ambient temperature during the summer.

Second, and more problematic, the rays from the sun now hit directly on the ground where the two ground rods are installed. The charge from the sunlight penetrates the ground a little and is captured near the surface. Since I'm using copper clad ground rods the charge in the soil from the sun neutralizes the charge collected further down in the rod. So the charge collected in the rod further down is just surging back and forth in the rod and never makes it into the circuit.

Next up: pull the ground rods, insulate the top three feet with heat shrink tubing, and reinstall.

[Guruji]

Hi thx1138 sounds interesting. Please Let us know your results
Thanks

[thx1138]

Anamolous readings

Several things came up and I just got this done today. I keep my readings is a spreadsheet and I have macros in that workbook that go out to the web and pull various environmental readings from teh weather station nearest me and also the jet stream and the solar wind readings.

I pulled my ground rods and put heat shrink tubing on the top 3 feet, reinstalled them, and took readings. I was surprised that my voltage reading was 5 times the previous reading.

I went back through the environmental stuff and, apparently, we had a B7 x-ray burst from the sun today. The speed of the solar wind was nothing unusual but the density (protons/cm cubed) was 4.25 times the next highest reading I have in my spreadsheet. This isn't automated so I don't have continuous readings.

So I can't attribute the improvement to insulating the upper part of the ground rods. I'll have to take a few days readings and see if there is an overall improvement.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

[boguslaw]

Don't you think that insulation is just ....insulation ? When you insulate broken electric cable what is the purpose ? Something escaping ? Or maybe something trying to get into cable ? Or both....Simple.

[thx1138]

Insulation

Don't you think that insulation is just ....insulation ? When you insulate broken electric cable what is the purpose ? Something escaping ? Or maybe something trying to get into cable ? Or both....Simple.

There is thermal insulation, electrical insulation, etc. Wood is an insulator and so is glass. Some insulators have higher/lower dielectric strengths, some have higher/lower dissipation factors, etc.

No, insulation isn't just insulation.

What's your point?

[boguslaw]

The point is electrical insulation like in capacitor Minimalizes leak to air. However I have a suspicion here it worked the opposite way ...

[thx1138]

Insulation

The point is electrical insulation like in capacitor Minimalizes leak to air. However I have a suspicion here it worked the opposite way ...

OK. I think I see what you are getting at. The insulation is a dielectric so it orients the opposite charge in the dielectric next to the insulated ground rod.

So if the lower, uninsulated portion of the ground rod is collecting a negative charge, the negative charge on the surface of the rod will attract a positive charge to the inside of the dielectric which is against the rod and will put the negative charge in the dielectic to the outside of the dielectric next to the the soil on the upper, insulated portion and that would attract more positive charge. Is that your thinking?

If the above is true, I'm having a problem visualizing how I can isolate the top part of the rod from the soil. I guess I would want the lowest dielectric constant I can get.

I guess the readings will tell. As of now it appears that having added the shrink wrap to the top of the ground rod has increased the voltage readings somewhat but not significantly. At least it doesn't apper to have done any harm. I'm going to take readings for another day and then get into it a bit more.

[thx1138]

Clueless

I'm stumped. I thought I was onto something with the solar wind aligning with my voltage readings but maybe not. They kind of fit in the previous 4 days readings but today's readings are exactly the opposite. We've had the strongest solar wind with the most protons per cm^3 at moderate speeds today and my readings are the lowest in my 5 day run. Apparently we got hit by a minor coronal mass ejection today that happened Sunday. I went back through the data thinking it might be an inverse relationship but that doesn't hold either.

The 5 days of voltage readings I have don't correlate with any of the environmental data I'm using - solar wind speed and density, temperature, humidity, cloud cover, wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, and UV index.

Insulating the top part of the rod doesn't seem to have had any affect at all. The first 2 days readings had the lowest readings at sun transit (directly overhead). Then I pulled the rods and insulated the top 3 feet but my lowest readings are still at sun transit.

Over the 5 days I have had absolutely miserable readings (today) and some strong readings but mostly inbetween. They seemed to follow a pattern of weak early in the morning before sunrise, getting a little stronger until about nine or ten AM local, then decreasing to minimal at sun transit, and just before sunset starting to go up again until about 10 PM when I quit reading but going down again some time during the night.

I found a wealth of satellite data for sun weather today so I may see if some of that other data correlates.

[thx1138]

CME absorbs xrays?

I just had a thought in the shower. We experienced a minor coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting the earth today and I got very low voltage readings all day.

In a prior post I commented about seeing a large jump in my voltage reading when the light from a cloud to cloud lightning bolt illuminated my elevated plate at night and a little research showed that lightning emits xrays and gamma rays.

So I'm thinking that the high density of particles in the CME between the sun and the earth was absorbing the sun's xrays and gamma rays before they got to the atmosphere today. If that were the case it would account for the low voltage readings if what the elevated plate is responding to is xrays and/or gamma rays. In essence, the CME acts as an xray filter preventing them from getting to the earth.

I'll see if I can find some historical xray readings to correlate with my voltage readings and possibly use solar wind particle density as a moderator in the correlation. Higher xray reading + low particle density = higher power. Lower xray reading + high particle density = lower power. The higher the particle density the fewer xrays get to the atmosphere.

If it works out it also points out a reliability problem using this method: minor CME = no power. So we would be back to using storage batteries like photovoltaics.

[thx1138]

Solar Wind and X-rays

It appears that my conjecture about the particles in the solar wind absorbing xrays and gamma rays is correct. There is one thing I did not think of last night and that is the position of your elevated plate on the surface of the earth. When you are at midnight local time the particles in the solar wind are not interferring with the xrays and gamma rays coming from interstellar space. But as the planet rotates and your location comes into the cone of the solar wind hitting that side of the planet the particles in the solar wind interfer more with both the gamma and xrays coming from the sun and interstellar space.

The voltage readings rise in the morning because the plate is receiving xrays from the sun but the elevated plate is on the fringe of the envelope of the solar wind particles. As the planet rotates and the solar wind particles become more dense the voltage readings go down because more are being absorbed before they get to the elevated plate. At noon local time the solar wind particles are most dense and the voltage readings go to their minimum for the day. As the planet continues to rotate and your position gets nearer the fringe again the voltage readings rise. In essence, the plasma of the solar wind is acting like a cloud in the atmosphere passing between a photovoltaic panel and the sun. The denser the cloud, the less energy is received.

Yesterday's arriving CME matter amplified the effect because the overall particle density was much higher.

I've only done one day's data so far but it fits fairly nicely. The X-Ray data is given in Watts per meter^2. Dividing that by the particle density of the solar wind yields a number to compare to the voltage readings. The result of the calculation goes down as the particle density goes up and it only seems to apply between 1 to 2 hours after sun rise to 1 to 2 hours before sunset. I'm not sure I've got the timing right because the particle density is measured by a satellite at the L1 Lagrangian point so it has to take some time to get to the earth, roughly an hour I think. I guess that would depend on the speed so I might be able to get a little closer since I have the speed of the solar wind also.

I'm not exactly sure where the xray data is collected but, assuming that it is traveling at the speed of light, it wouldn't have much effect on my calculations anyway. Of course we are usually looking at the speed of light in a vacuum, which the solar wind plasma is not. So that would effect the calculation somewhat but I don't know how much. I understand that the shorter the wavelength the more it would be slowed down by being in a non-vacuum medium but I don't know enough about that to estimate what affect it might have. Anyone know where to find info on that?

I still need to do the correlation for the other 4 days of readings I have and I'm headed out of town tomorrow to a rural location where I have no internet connection so it may be a while before I post again.