Hi Gang! Here's my corona motor running on atmospheric electricity.
There's just a wire extending up from the
corona motor high up into the air.
It took a few tries, and the enormous help of a friend with a large
enough hexacopter, willing to lift the wire up,
and as you can see, it works.
The motor is called a corona motor and is an electrostatic type of motor.
Atmospheric electricity isn't powerful enough to run an electromagnetic motor,
the type you encounter every day.
A wire is connected from the Earth ground to one side of the corona motor.
Another wire is connected to the other side of the corona motor
and goes up into the sky around 120 meters, or 390 feet up.
The top end of the wire goes to six sharp points
made of six sewing pins. A fishing line around 4 meters,
or 13 feet long, goes from there up to the hexacopter.
That's to minimize or eliminate any effect the hexacopter might have
on the atmospheric electricity.
It took a couple of trips out to large fields to work out all the kinks.
Here's setting it up on the first trip, starting with the corona motor.
For a ground connection we pushed some thick copper wires into the ground,
and then connected a wire between that and one side of the corona motor.
Another wire was connected to the other side of the corona motor.
That one will go to the wire that'll be lifted into the sky.
The wire that'll be lifted into the sky starts out on this spool,
with a hand crank for winding it back up afterward. The next step was to connect the other end
of that coil of wire to the sharp pointed part.
The connection is made at this white plastic piece.
Here I'm connecting a part with just 2 sharp points
but later we switch to using the part with 6 sharp points,
with the theory that the more sharp points there are,
the higher the electrical current will be. Notice the fishing line that's also attached
to the white plastic piece.
With the hexacopter sitting upside down on the ground,
the other end of that fishing line is tied to the bottom of
the hexacopter's frame.
And here we all are making final preparations for lift-off.
And then lift-off. Here's the hexacopter hovering
at just 21 meters, or 70 feet,
before rising higher still. And then we continue rising.
Notice that we're using 26 gauge enamel coated wire.
To meet the safety guidelines here in Ottawa, Canada,
the hexacopter has been programmed to go no higher than 90 meters,
or 300 feet, which it reaches in probably under a minute.
Once the hexacopter is hovering at around 90 meters,
or 300 feet, I connect the other end of that spool of wire
to the wire I'd connected earlier to one side of the corona motor.
You can see there's still plenty of wire left on the spool.
The cylinder in the corona motor should now start turning.
But it doesn't. I try various adjustments.
I do get shocks though, when I touch the high voltage parts.
A smaller pinwheel type corona motor might turn with this voltage
and charge but not this large one.
We try for four attempts altogether before all the spare hexacopter batteries
are discharged and we call it a day.
For the second trip we put the corona motor up on a plastic crate,
to get any high voltage parts away from the ground.
The first try is with some plastic insulated wire this time.
To improve the ground connection I pour water around the ground wire,
wetting the ground. I even use myself as a part of the ground.
But on the first and second tries, and with all the adjusting,
and fiddling, the corona motor's cylinder still doesn't turn.
Here's the third try before lift-off. Notice that we're using the 6 pointed part
at the top of the wire for these attempts.
Also, the plastic insulated wire turned out to be only 70 meters,
or 230 feet long, so we switched back to the enamel insulated wire.
But shortly after lift-off
we have a break in a connection at the spool.
On the fourth try, and with our last set of batteries, it works.
There isn't much torque here since a light touch on the shaft will stop it.
It doesn't keep running though.
It seems to stop abruptly at times. The shock is much more painful this time.
I soon realize the problem is that one end of the cylinder
is too close to some nuts and bolts inside at this end
and sometimes touches. Once I pull it away it works great!
That was the last kink worked out.
So why did it work on this try? Looking at the hexacopter's data afterward
we saw that something went wrong with the programmed height limits
and it had gone as high as 120 meters, or 390 feet up.
With atmospheric electricity, more height means a higher voltage,
and possibly there were more ions at that height too.
But, since that's above the 90 meter, or 300 feet limit,
that ended the experiments with this corona motor.
But we did succeed in our goal of powering an electrostatic motor
using atmospheric electricity.
Well, thanks for watching!
See my youtube channel for more interesting videos like this.
That includes one on how this powering with atmospheric electricity works.
One showing this corona motor turning much faster
and with much more torque using high voltage power supplies.
And sort of related, one about a gravity light that powers LEDs
using a falling mass.
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See you soon!