Peter wrote:

> End of World is Nigh ...

A pal at Uni (quite a party animal) often used to say - if
anything's worth doing, it's worth doing to extremes.  I've
often taken that as sound advice.

Stefan wrote:

> It's a big fun, you know. Remember my earth antenna in
> the forst :-)

Indeed yes, and I think I received a little signal from it.

Today I ran out 500m of wire and terminated the remote
end in a convenient bog.  Not the km I was thinking of
but it'll do for a start.

The resistance of the ground loop through the wire and
back to the domestic ground is 380 ohms.  It is virtually
all resistance, I can see a slight phase shift of the test
current but not enough to measure the reactance accurately.
That's a pity.  If I knew the inductance I could estimate
the effective area of the one turn ground loop.  Anyway the
loop impedance is flat up to 2MHz where there is a very
slight peak.

I got the amplifier fired up.  It's quite a beast, rated 5kW
into 4 ohm.  Actually I've got two of these but one will do
for now.  I reckon about a 20 turn primary around that monster
toroid will match a kW or two via the 400t secondary into the
earth loop.

I don't know if I'll get it rigged up tonight but maybe
tomorrow evening I might be able to do a 'large signal
impedance measurement'.

I guess this isn't going to radiate very well but it's
fun to try.  If any of the neighbours ask why the ground
is steaming I'll just tell them about the heavy duty
mole repeller I'm working on.

--
Paul Nicholson
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