This photo is figure 10 from the article http://www.free-energy-info.tuks.nl/VladimirUtkin2.htm. Here a Lowglow 9500v neon sign transformer is rectified and put across a spark gap. on one side of the gap is the transmitter plate (wrapped around the tube) and on the other side is earth ground.

The receiver is the green coil over the copper plate and the red wires connect the ends of the coils to to the 7w lightbulb. another green wire is attached to earth ground.

The bulb did not light unless the receiver was earthed, also the bulb got much brighter when the gap was widened and its frequency changed. It made the strangest hiss. This has a lot of similarities to Tesla's hairpin circuit as the copper plate and the earth are both capacitors on opposite sides of a spark gap.

Here is another great article on the topic by Vladimir Utkin, Vladimir Utkin's Free-Energy Secrets - March 2012 I struggled to understand secret 1 until I realized the energy in tesla's self powered lc circuit, is increased every cycle because the field generated by the coil passes through the capacitor adding energy each cycle. Not sure how to show that as an experiment... If it were drawn differently it would have been easier to grasp.

This Don Smith book has excellent photos of his devices including his Dipole Transformer generator, a coil around a rod perpendicular to a stack of plates as a capacitor. As usual not enough information to build it but a great concept.

https://archive.org/details/24739145...ByDonaldLSmith

Tesluh,
Going back to your original post... The sticking point for me with loading up a cap with ambient energy is getting the cap to discharge. I think once we have a pulse from a discharging cap, scaling up the voltage is not a problem. It's that initial discharge at a very low level that seems most difficult.

Any thoughts?
Bob

high capacitance lead to more discharge time, you can try a serial resistor to control the amount of electric current circulate this also help.

Ways to discharge giant capacitors (very dangerous...) that come to mind are with a resistance as medi mentions, possibly using a spark gap, having the load attached before the caps are brought up to charge, or possibly discharged in a way similar to how they are charged. Have read about but never experimented with using voltage divider resistors to feed an inverter (basically the secondary side of a Don Smith device)

I have had these big caps charged up and could sense voltage around them a few inches away with my Fluke 90-1000v voltage detector probe.

The danger of working with these enormous caps (size of a car battery) is one of the things that deters me from experimenting without a good plan. Perhaps a smaller scale first?

Thanks guys for your response to my question.
I prefer to work on the small scale myself. Charge can always be scaled up.
Have a good day.
Bob

working with HV capacitor have to be done with extreme care, the following photo show a short circuited 200 UF/450V electrolyte capacitor , it's similar to normal fire or flame ... !

Indeed! capacitors and high voltage, not a toy...

Was thinking about some don smith devices and might have discovered something interesting.

Are both photos of almost the exact same configuration?

Top photo (middle device), 12v to high voltage-high frequency neon transformer, into a sort of avramenko plug type configuration, into a capacitor. Assuming the use of this device would be to draw power from the large black capacitor.

Below, hv powered plasma globe, receiver coil, connected to a set of four diodes under that plate (possibly the same avramenko like configuration), connected to capacitors, power drawn from capacitors...

I used to think the 4 diodes under the plate were a diode bridge but now seeing Dons other device I am not convinced. Perhaps that's why they were concealed instead of in the open?

I have tried the plasma tube device with plate capacitors connected to diode bridge, and caps and there wasn't useful output that I could tell.

Anyone have an idea what the output circuit of a device like this would consist of?

maybe all the Don Smith devices show this capacitor arrangement, some expert say the capacitor in Smith device is very important maybe it contain carbon inside to amplify the radiant energy, in my opinion plasma device is only the half shown device this mean the source of high voltage generate the plasma is unknown and must be unconventional , about diodes in all the test i did the diode bridge isn't a good solution, sometimes one diode is better than 4 ! avramenko or diode plug configuration is great also.

I don't think there is anything exotic about the plasma tube or plasma globe he uses, The 18" plasma tube I have here was $30 off ebay (used) and disturbs ambient about 2 feet diameter, as measured with a neon bulb Fluke "voltage probe". I have seen a plasma globe disassembled and it uses a high voltage coil much like a flyback transformer. I believe the ambient tries to extinguish and re-balance the disruption and that causes a rush of energy to come toward and cycle around the tube/globe, harvested by the capacitor plates or the lc coil (which also has a capacitance). That's a 1 sentence way to try to describe something very abstract and complicated.

the balance of disruption is the key in smith device , almost all the electrical devices we use daily produce such electromagnetic radiation with variation of strength , but energy balance is another subject... it's like how well the door is opened, in other hand there's a plenty of phenomena involved in high voltage high frequency .. if you produce one thing you may miss the other part and electricity you need both voltage and amperage ..

Yes, I recall Smith saying it was important to have the primary coil near the center of the secondary coil on his white board device for just that reason.

My latest question has to do with the "excitation spark" as mentioned in Utkins articles, I have re-read this page about 15 times as I know the answers to many of my questions about this topic are in there, and every time I read it I get an "ah-ha" because I understand something I previously didn't get, but the learning curve is steep on some of these topics. He refers to coils excited by spark and on many of the drawings he has "excitation spark" written with two free hanging ends of the coils but never seems to go into detail about exactly how spark is created and applied. Seems like half of a schematic on many of his examples.

In my workshop I have four 60hz nsts, three I bought used and had been doing experiments with them until I realized the reason the were used and removed is that there was something wrong with each of them. It was changing the results of some of my experiments because they were not working the way they should. I bought a brand new 60 hz nst with a separate gfci and rewired it so that its just a 120v primary and 9kv secondary with center tap transformer. Now when I hook it up like a basic tesla coil I actually get what I think should be the waveform/field put out by a tesla coil primary. What I am trying to say is that even though two circuits were identical, the difference between the transformers threw off the results of a relatively simple circuit.

If we are going to use a high voltage power supply to excite a coil to create these sparks, we need to know exactly what to use. Nst, Mot, obit, flyback (ac or dc), pole pig, tesla coil, are some examples of high voltage sources, with many to thousands of variations of each and other transformers not mentioned. some of the secondaries have center taps some do not, some have gfci some do not. Then once we have figured out exactly what to use for experimenting, we need a schematic (for instance if there are caps or diodes or a diode bridge we need to know exactly what diodes or type and size of caps) to create the circuit to create the sparks.


I have already successfully replicated his experiment from "the electro-radiant effect" as shown in my earlier posts which fired a spark gap with a rectified ac current, but are the sparks produced the same excitation sparks required to drive the coils in the rest of his schematics properly? If not how do we excite coils "with a spark" as he suggests? This is something that should be simple that either he glossed over and didn't cover or I am somehow not figuring out.

maybe this is one of the most complicated aspect in this technology , there's some reason for my conclusion.. one of them is Don Smith explication in 1996 presentation, he said the spark gap isn't anything you may know , the plasma globe device show this possibility also but in Tesla term there's spark quenching technique to enhance the production of radiant energy , the following from Utkin's page :






Tesla used a strong magnet to snuffer the spark, quenching process open the door for radiant energy to enter the system effectively, in smith system there's no spark gap as example the plasma globe system, the reason for this is the spin separation mechanism , the primary coil is Don device work as a spin separator coil and this happen naturally , the electrons are well arranged and when they meet each other useful radiant energy is produced ... the animation show Don device is the following from an archived Don smith website !





in the above animation you can see radiant energy, scalar waves, the magnetic portion in right , the electric portion in left where it look like a DC pulse, standing waves is clear if you examine the photo thoroughly .



if we understand this the other part of the system will be a mere a question of time even it's not particularly easy..

Been having difficulty getting the sparks generated, most of my power supplies put out the plasma-like ionized air instead of the snappy individual sparks I am looking for, but have seen auto ignition coils made to do exactly what I need for experimenting. (you tube videos show how to make a "taser" and that's exactly the kind of high voltage spark I'm looking for). Here is a rather long video but it works. The coil is rated for 12v on the primary and this is 120v, it works but not sure how well it would work long term. The Lutron home wall dimmer I bought seems to work like a work like a relay, pulsing the primary coil. I had some 3.5uf ~400v capacitors I wired in parallel for a 7uf capacitor. Going to try this with a neon sign transformer and see if it has the same effect, they are rated for 120v ac on the primary side.


Here is the schematic at the end of the video:
https://youtu.be/L451RzeFNdo?t=890
[VIDEO]https://youtu.be/L451RzeFNdo?t=890[/VIDEO]