How dangerous is AM radio? (ft Plasma Channel)

[@PlasmaChannel]

Real friends dont let friends eat plasma pickles, JEFF. I may never recover. Also, love your cut of the event. We both came to really similar conclusions to the foldback event and shorting to ground!

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Ha! Next time we'll add some more seasoning to cover up the taste of copper! Be sure to check out Jay's video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKDamYN3gqmCitE

[@gsfarm9]

you should be selling that "plasma pickle" as merch!

[@S-T-E-V-E]

@@GeerlingEngineering I think that watching someone fry whilst channeling a Taylor Swift's 'Shake it off' would be in equal parts Totally Horrific and Absolutely Hilarious!

[@BillAnt]

Messing with a pickle and antenna tower, it will get ya in a pickle real quick. hehe

[@EdwardTye-rl5jr]

​@GeerlingEngineering there's a video I've been looking for for a few years now. It shows a ham radio antenna frying a pvc pipe. It's freaking insane!! Lol

[@garymarsh23]

Ex-Nautel employee here. We'd run our transmitters at full power into a dummy load, and have holes drilled in the outside of the hardline coax going between the two that we'd stick a screwdriver through to dead short the transmitter output. They could shrug off that kind of abuse just fine, so they can handle pretty much anything else. Transmitters have to handle all sorts of high SWR conditions anyway - lightning strikes, ATU fires, tower collapses, copper thieves... guess we can add "weirdos with a pickle on a stick" to the list.

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Ooh... now I *know* we need to find a way to visit the Nautel HQ - would love to participate in some of this testing :)

[@hallkbrdz]

@@GeerlingEngineering Maybe you should get together with Jeff Dunham to try a Jalapeno on a stick - to see if it translates to Spanish. LOL

[@nickwallette6201]

Would love to see this in a datasheet: "Grounded pickle on tower: Indefinite"

[@flare1129]

This is by far the best comment posted in the best way for this pickle-tickular situation. Thank you for your service, in every conceivable way.

[@GMCLabs]

Heck just disconnecting the cable from the antenna does the same thing as a dead short. RF is a strange animal.

[@shockinglybright]

“Don’t try this at home” Ok, there’s a 50KW AM station near me, I’ll try it there!

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Noooo!! Haha, just follow the advice right at the end

[@IndianaDipper194]

@@binky_bun smoky finals huh?

[@webfreezy]

@@binky_bun Did you use ham for testing the ham station conductivity?

[@nikkiofthevalley]

​@@binky_bunDid you blow anything in the process?

[@bobblum5973]

​@@webfreezy Ham on wry? 😁

[@OH8EFI]

RF burns are weird. I forgot my radio was transmitting 100W WSPR and did a little tug on my random wire to see much much it was sagging. Felt like I had put my hand into a hornets nest. Little white dots appeared instantly in few places. Funny thing is that the burns looked insignificant in their appearance but oh boy did they hurt long afterwards. And they took almost half a year to disappear. And that only with 100W on upper HF!

[@JeffGeerling]

Ouch! Glad they did at least disappear at some point!

[@davidwright3783]

Glad you told us, I'm always tempted to touch my LPFM Radiator

[@thearchitect4726]

interesting you sustained an rf burn at 100w, i have been old numerous times anything over 50w is considered dangerous, will have to be careful with my setup, sometimes crank 3300 watts into my sky stick. i guess i don't spoon with it so should be fine.

[@OH8EFI]

@@thearchitect4726 I've got few small burns with 50W also. Tho they felt more like something between a wasp sting and a mosquito sting. Mild, but the small white burn dot didn't disapper for the next 3 months

[@thearchitect4726]

@@OH8EFI will have to move my 9 foot stanless to the roof of my 4wd when dxing. How close can i get to the antenna while transmitting with around 300w ssb?

[@DarrLaw]

The corn dog makes an excellent speaker/conductor! Appreciated the strong dad-joke energy of this video.

[@johnlagreca6288]

I think that insulating layer of delicious breading makes the fine plasma modulation zone.

[@NeilHanlon]

the pickle: "why have you done this to us?!"

[@bartgrefte]

The movie Sausage Party (2016) comes to mind

[@mavfan1]

@@bartgreftethe comment is the first time that film has come to my mind since I heard of it (2016) and hopefully the last!

[@HaddaClu]

​@@mavfan1oh? Well then; did you hear about the sequel tv series that just came out on Amazon Prime? Supposedly it's just as raunchy.

[@mr.tuttifrutti9280]

😂

[@minchmoorramblers6856]

Then it says “your f*****d”😂

[@poolbumone]

I love you and your dad! Love your channel also, keep it up!

[@chuckfarley7642]

The pickle is mostly saltwater so it’s likely a better conductor than the hotdogs. That may be why it got more fold back.

[@johnlagreca6288]

Acetic acid in vinegar also increases the available ions for conduction. Good point on fold back.

[@indridcold8433]

I am so glad the rusted 4 foot fence is there to keep everyone safe.

[@chuckfarley7642]

It’s all Darwin once you cross the fence :-)

[@Bob_Smith19]

@@chuckfarley7642There’s a backlog of Darwin Awards that need to be handed out. Let nature take its course.

[@d_pete361]

That fence is only there to keep people honest. Kinda like the saying "that locked door you just kicked in was there for your protection, not mine"

[@johnlagreca6288]

At least I know in a pinch I can cook a sausage with a pole and a ground rod from outside the fence. Wonder if we can do marshmallows and corn on the cob.

[@Alabaster335]

Your dad is a legend and very educational. They don't make 'em like that anymore. I vote we see more of him imparting his wisdom!

[@Penske_Logistics_Roseburg-Ore]

When I was just 8 years old, Me and the other boys used to go to the back of the city out in the wetlands in Menlo Park, Ca. There lays an AM transmitter on 1420 KHz and one day we were there, and I had touched the metal bar on the antenna structure, and it gave me the worse electrocution shot/Burn I have ever seen, hell yeah that damn thing has burned my thumb to the bone. I'm glad that I didn't have the chance to grab it with the palm of my hand, just the thumb touched it and it all went bad from there. I cried like hell because it just kept on hurting and hurting as time went on.

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Ouch! Hopefully at least some healing over time. RF burns sound like a very bad time.

[@Jah_Rastafari_ORIG]

Are you talking about the towers by the Dumbarton Bridge..?

[@partytempo]

"AM breakfast sausage" 😆

[@GeerlingEngineering]

It will greatly multiply your pain!

[@TheMacroSlacker]

Is this like ham radio?

[@_brutalistsbible_5049]

'...that's the AM breakfast water'

[@redstone0234]

When the bratwurst was in contact with the antena the radio host started speaking german 😆

[@WilliamHollinger2019]

Perfect timing

[@TheNapalmFTW]

That was most definitely the joke lol

[@Bastelei]

😂😂😂 Ich hoffe es war keine original Thüringer Bratwurst

[@goingrandom3558]

Dann hätte der einen komischen Akzent gehabt. Genauso wie mit einer Weißwurst. Will man sich nicht antun

[@Gottfried.Leibniz]

- Colleagues, we have high VSWR, do we have issues with the feeder or the antenna? - No, just a sausage and pickle testing. - Ah, the Geerlings, cool.

[@johnlagreca6288]

-No, just a family cookout.

[@enchantededition6879]

When the sausage touched at the beginning “GOOOOD MOOORNING VIETNAAAM “ would have been a great line to hear coming through!

[@k8byp]

The story was for WLW when they were at 500KW was that the fields were so strong that it resonated the metal car roof of vehicles passing on the highway, and supposedly some could hear the audio on fillings in their teeth. I picked up their audio thru a concrete and rebar floor in a building about 5 miles away.

[@radijoe]

I heard similar stories from the KMOX engineers and a few from people who experienced some issues. A nearby house had a ‘toilet radio’!

[@bobblum5973]

I love this channel for many reasons. Here's one: I've worked with electronics since the early '70s, and back then I used to live about two miles straight-line distance from that radio station transmitter. I played around with CB radios, and discovered that if I keyed up my CB without a microphone by using a jumper lead, and then held the mic input lead in my fingers, it would transmit a perfectly modulated audio of that radio station through the CB. Thanks for the fun and educational video!

[@Crazyuncle1]

I never met a radio engineer who enjoyed doing something this off the wall. Thanks, this was a lot of fun to watch and informative at the same time. Long Live AM.

[@CedroCron]

I love the videos you and your dad make... Like, it just makes my day! Thanks guys.

[@mattgayda2840]

Finally another plasma pickle and high voltage hot dog! The Christian radio station has a pickle preacher. So many veggietales jokes here, love it

[@Meshtastic]

Your dad is cool.

[@benargee]

When can we have meshtastic radios that transmit sound when I touch it with a wiener?

[@markcohen5094]

Yes, RF burns hurt.. It's a mix of feeling like you're both burning and being electrocuted at the same time.

[@NeneExists]

I can still feel the rf burn I got 25 years ago, and that was just 30W of SSB. That part of my finger is kinda flatter, and the sense of touch and pain just doesn't work quite right.

[@n8chz]

Can be used as a method of hair removal (called thermolysis), but those devices are just 7.5W, also use point effect to isolate the energy to the base of the hair follicle.

[@jc-0h]

I knew an Air Force veteran who had received a severe RF burn when a piece of equipment he was working on was energized. He said after a few moments of confusion the pain caused him to fall off the equipment and he didn't realize how badly the fall injured him until he tried to get up. Said the burn had all of his attention.

[@BillAnt]

Sound like the perfect replacement for electric chairs. lol

[@olalundgren3429]

​@@BillAntStar Spangled Banner playing while cooking...

[@dglcomputers1498]

There used to be a high power SW station not too far from here where not only did residents in the nearest village complain that they car key fobs wouldn't work bit that they could hear Russian coming out of their toasters! This was at Rampisham Down, one of the sites the BBC built for the world service and had multiple 300kW and 500kW SW transmitters going into an impressive curtain antenna array that co ered a good few acres. Hate to think what the erp was if some the transmiiters themselves were 500kW output.

[@Mr__Anon-E-Mouse]

It would've been a lot cheaper and less painful to stand under that transmitter than to get a vasectomy 😂😂😂

[@onmyworkbench7000]

I was the one or was one of the commenters that asked about how it would affect the reflected power (VSWR). Thank for showing it. I have had an RF burn on my right index finger and it's not fun!

[@MidnightBlueMetallic]

People in 1924: We'll have global communications to share ideas and better society. People in 2024: We have global communications to cook food on an AM tower for youtube lulz.

[@frankbohnen2347]

As a German, I like the Bratwurst thing.

[@Nobe_Oddy]

OMG... LMAO!! @ 2:20 that poor pickle screamed out "WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US?!?!?!" 😂😂🤣🤣

[@negirno]

Came for the SBCs, stayed for sausage and pickle cooking with an AM transmission tower. Seriously: the mind-blowing thing for me is that these things being cooked actually emits the sound of the broadcast!

[@RingwayManchester]

Absolutely fantastic! Hope this turns into a 1 mil vid!

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Ha, thanks!

[@Namegoeshere-op9hg]

Our nations radio networks are simply amazing. What a fortunate opportunity for the public to see a glimpse of the physics that connects us. And hopefully people learn to stay away from towers and how to not die if they find themselves near one.

[@JuliusBaum-cb6rc]

As a German myself I can confirm that 5:57 is actually really good. I used to operate an small am pirate station (relatively simple self build transmitter with 807 power amp tube). It outputted maybe 50W. I remamber it hurting really bad when I touched the antenna. The main problem was that I never had access to an tower or high point to mount the antenna wire at. It was just a few meters above the ground. The other problem was that no one in Germany listened to am radio, even 25 years ago. Everybody wanted fm.

[@heyguy2767]

8:28 "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing" Yo, I think that sausage has gone bad.

[@user-yr7m2]

8:25

[@Boldswords11]

Holy crap! I've lived in St Charles for a long time and I always figured that old radio tower was defunct lol. I never bothered to tune in to that frequency.

[@BenInSeattle]

Thank you, Geerlings, for doing this at home so I don't have to. The talking hot dog was wonderful!

[@supersat]

The bandwidth is easy to explain. It's a trig identity that when you multiply two sinusoidal frequencies together (which is partially how AM works), you get signals at the sum and difference of your frequencies. This gives you the double sidebands.

[@TrinitronX]

To more completely answer the question about what happens to the energy when shorting to ground potential: Think about all the heat and smoke you’re generating by burning the hotdogs… mainly it’s going into heating the meat. Some may be re-radiated in RF frequency ranges, yet not efficiently or effectively. More effective is the re-radiating as sound energy through the “plasma speaker” and into the air. Also, don’t forget that dirt is actually a rather poor conductor, and not much current is flowing directly through the dirt. For more on myth-busting the ground / dirt ideas… see Bill Whitlock’s papers and presentations on the topic. One in particular where he talks about the non-involvement of the earth grounding rods to residential AC fault currents is actually up here on KZbin in a video titled “Bill Whitlock - Signal Interfaces Debunked - 4/27/2021”. At about 38 minutes in is where he starts talking about the relevant physics and concepts involved.

[@McTroyd]

That German joke really was the wurst. 😉 Any listeners notice the brief drop in output? Or is just normal for AM radio to do that in 2024, with all our switching power supplies and giant electrical substations?

[@MrBeaker74]

Tangential, those eclipse photos you have in the background are beautiful!

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Thanks! I have a video about the eclipse experience over on my main @JeffGeerling channel

[@dans8287]

My wife had a minor surgical procedure called an RF Ablation. When She told me about it this is what came to mind.

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Oh my! I hope they were a little more precise in their application of RF energy than we were here...

[@nataliealliepage7155]

@@GeerlingEngineeringThere’s a form of brain surgery used for mild, benign tumors or sometimes, for (very much elective and seldom used) alternatives to the lobotomy (targeting only specific pathways) used for people with severe ocd who tried everything else. It’s called gamma knife. A cone-shaped beam of gamma rays is projected and the convergence is hot enough to burn out the brain tissue.

[@christopherleubner6633]

Yup they basically cook tissue in the atrium of the heart near the puminary veins to prevent left atrial fibrillation They put a low powered RF antenna in a catheter and administer 50W or so for a couple seconds.😮

[@dans8287]

@@christopherleubner6633 This technique is also used on various other parts of the body as well. My wife suffers from back pain and it was used to fry some of the nerves they thought were causing the pain. We are still dealing with complications from this procedure.

[@Molon_Labe1776]

I had an RFA done on my thoracic spine without anesthesia. It hurt like hell, but the doctor kept me going through the last few seconds of agony. He did burn off a nerve root, but not the right one unfortunately. 73

[@maxruggiero4338]

2:20 “WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO US” is exactly what I would expect the pickle to say if it could talk

[@Cryogenius333]

Pickle: starts talking Nerds: its aliiive...ITS ALLLIIIIVE! ITS ALLLLLIIIIIVE!

[@voltare2amstereo]

In Australia we have this thing called a democracy sausage. It's the sausage sizzle at an election point, usually at the exit poll side

[@timstoffel4799]

Transmitter metering responds in interesting ways to reflected power. So, an increase in indicated power without a change in signal strength (via the FIM) during a high VSWR event would not be unusual. Thanks for doing this fun experiment!

[@dezertraider]

2700 V0LTS..UPPER WRIST TO FOR FINGER,THOUGHT BLEW MY HAND OFF.GREAT VIDEO,THANK YOU FOR THE SMILES..

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Ow! Glad you're smiling!

[@markbenton4370]

Thank you and your wonderful father for the fun science experiment ... Loved it and I wont be climbing any type of towers ...

[@EvilGPT]

Imagine watching your hand melt while a radio channel plays from it. New fear unlocked.

[@daltonking6956]

Nah just imagine the station just started playing talking heads psycho killer "I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire Psycho Killer Qu'est-ce que c'est?"

[@mx518h]

never in my life I thought I would hear a pickle say ”why have you done this to us”

[@craigpennington1251]

Absolutely great stuff guys. I love AM radio but the commercials as of the last 10 years is staggering. Love to hear more music on AM like it used to be. You could hear a good station belting out tunes for a thousand miles. Can't do that with FM. Really miss the old days on AM. Thanks for posting. P.S. Notice how dead the grass is around that tower.

[@ChocolateTampon]

Since taping sausages to my CB antenna I have doubled my range. Thanks for this :)

[@areminderofwhatweare]

4:07 the pickle speaks out against the horrific things these guys are doing to food in the name of science

[@Andrew-ep4kw]

When I was in college, I worked weekend night shifts at an AM station as the transmitter operator. One of my jobs was to switch the pattern at sunrise to the day pattern. Do do it, you would press a button that reduced the power of the transmitter, then another that powered the relays that switched the pattern, then another to restore the transmitter to full power. The phasor rack was right next to the controls and you could clearly hear the program audio in the sound created by the circuitry.

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Those relays are no joke!

[@Andrew-ep4kw]

@GeerlingEngineering yeah, they sounded pretty substantial when they were thrown. The chief engineer made clear to us to NEVER switch the pattern with the transmitter at full power.

[@GeerlingEngineering]

@@Andrew-ep4kw That'd be a good way to quickly rack up a few thousand dollars in failed relays!

[@robertw1871]

Definitely give you some respect for these transmitters

[@manny-]

GUTEN MORGEN MEINE KINDER, GUTEN MORGEN ! Totally got me xD

[@webfreezy]

Yeah, and now it's actually morning here in good old Germany! 😁

[@JAMES-KB7TBT]

The fold back was impressive, fun video to watch.

[@Sp1der44]

Fascinating stuff. I think the corn dog did so well due to all of the oil in its coating. The tower leg was definitely becoming more resistive with the carbon building up on it. We did the electric pickle at a concert venue a couple of times and the secret there is a small board with two hefty nails that go into the ends of the pickle (I guess in this configuration you'd have an anode nail (the drain) and the cathode (the source - touched to the tower) - do it at night and you'll definitely get plasma in the pickle that will mimic the audio going through it. Loved this video! 🫡 👍

[@Silvertarian]

AM works with a carrier signal (1460) and the upper and lower side bands. A typical AM signal has a bandwidth of 10kHz

[@jwdevine]

But, we need you to do this @ night time. Pickles are actually nocturnal, the best ones to get are deli barrel pickles. Although you can get by with Claussen pickles are uncooked and are typically located in the refrigerated section of grocery stores. Cooked or Uncooked matters. 😂❤

[@mariomusico2010]

AM towers have a same voltage of Eletric chairs! The risk of eletrocution and death is very high!

[@steeviebops]

There was a long wave tower in Ireland (Clarkstown/Summerhill) used for Atlantic 252 in the 90s, on 252 kHz as the name suggests. It ran at 500 kW during the day and when it started, there were reports of people being able to hear the station inside phone booths in the nearby villages!

[@zootflute]

As the pickle dies "why have you done this to us"

[@Qrail]

Stay away from towers. Unless the chief engineer is too old to change the tower light. My big adventure as the president of the local RACES (radio amateur civil emergency service) was to climb a 202 foot tall AM tower and replace the top light. No ladder. Jumped on the tower from a pickup truck. Marked it off my bucket list. (1993). I worked at that station for 7 years, part time on the weekends, and board oping high school football games. Afterwords I was the night DJ “RF Burns”.

[@radijoe]

Thanks for working with RACES. In my early days a lot of older engineers did some maintenance on hot towers either using a tower climber or a "helper". I bet there are a couple other interesting stories in those 7 years!

[@Qrail]

@@radijoe actually yes. Here is one more. He took the snow cat up the mountain, and after completing his work on some microwaves, and maintenance for “other agencies”, he discovered that he forgot to turn off the headlights on the snow cat. Dead battery. I had access to a 1965 Dodge pickup. 4WD. With a spare battery, jumper cables, and a board member, I went up the mountain. The drifts were above the windshield in some places, and the snow was above the hood. By the time I got to him, the board member had freaked out and was ready to go back. The truck has overheated, so I had to get all the snow out of the radiator. We all lived to see another day. 10745 ft. at summit.

[@zarnold1995]

That's friggin awesome lol

[@jagmarc]

So is the tower itself actually part of the driven radiating element? I guess as the wavelength being so long it must be like that but what I can't seem to see is a high voltage insulator at the base. And a inductance somewhere for matching?

[@petermichaelgreen]

@@jagmarc I think there is a lump of ceramic insulator between the base of the metal tower, and the concrete block with ground straps. Then a metal rod coming in from the side to feed the RF signal to the tower.

[@ModelA]

Did that with a Continental Doherty modulated 10 KW AM. The Continental didn't care what the load was, would not fold back on you like that. The Continental is still there as an aux because when there's lightning or something goes sideways with the DA, I can switch to the aux and stay on the air.

[@BlackHoleForge]

0:41 As a blacksmith I have hurt and burnt myself so many times in so many ways, but today I found out there is a new type of burn called Radio Frequency Burn. It's the burn that will sing to you. 🤯

[@EvilGPT]

The Pickle "Why have you done this to us?" Lol

[@alzeNL]

adding new meaning to 'qrp' 'shall i reduce my pickle'

[@joecooter151]

So a bit ago I learned that carrier current broadcasting is a way of broadcasting AM without a license, but there isn't a lot of practical knowledge out there on how it's actually done. Might be a good topic for a future video

[@FosterFarmsOk]

cracked my up with the translate to german and breakfast sausage jokes. LOL

[@RalphHightower]

That was as interesting to watch as Justin's Smarter Every Day when set up a rig to see what happens when two bullets collide.

[@jeffreynolds922]

Pickle juice is an electrolyte that carries current better than just having a hot dog. Now if you could only toast smores on it.

[@cambridgemart2075]

Having worked at the Brookmans Park transmission site in the UK, where they run a 140kW AM transmitter, I witnessed what happens when a wire crane rope comes within reach of someone and they don't bother using the grounding hook before reaching for the hook. The arc was impressive, the screams from the guy who grounded the arc were terrifying. I don't know how long that guy spent in hospital, as he worked for another contractor on site.

[@jagmarc]

I used to live a few miles north of the site, the BBC tends to have really powerful stations. When drive past the site on the old A1 you'd hear BBC Radio 4 break through whatever the car radio was tuned to. I'm told people who had crystal set receivers in Potters Bar could hear it from headphones the other side of the room.

[@ogshotglass9291]

One of my friend's dad works as an environmental specialist for Goldstone. He mentioned that the radio signal is so strong, they sometimes have to pick up dead birds that flew in front of the dish or decided to try to land on the antenna

[@Phil-D83]

The fence is a bit low to protect stupid from itself

[@GeerlingEngineering]

For this site, there's a locked gate at the entrance, a locked fence surrounding the entire field (with RF danger signs around it), and then locked fences around all the towers as well. It's also far off the beaten path (though some home builders have been adding subdivisions a mile or so away-until recently it was rural for miles around). There's only so much you can do for remote tower installations, but hopefully someone sees this video and understands it's not a good idea to play around this much RF!

[@WDGreer59]

KHOJ is the old KIRL. My dad and I used it as an ADF, flying in and out of St. Charles.

[@optical_ideas]

This was great, as always. To me as a german, the Bratwurst joke was hilarious 😄

[@FamilyHomeTheater]

The lobes on either side of the spectrum are the sidebands. When you mix frequencies you get 4 different outputs. The 2 original frequencies., the sum and the difference. So if you have a 1460KHz station and you modulate it with a 1KHz signal, you get 1Khz, 1459KHz, 1460KHz and 1461KHz at the output.

[@blackIce504]

the pickle was very conductive, causing a short, as i think its called the brine juice in pickling vinegar and salt plus pickle stuff, i would say that acts as an electrolyte adding to the conductivity of the pickle. just a thought at 1.49AM.

[@the.azrider]

12:04 "..wurst variable resistor..."

[@ucantSQ]

I had no idea corndogs were so gracious. Such a nice guy.

[@erayk96]

"Ahh, ahh! So wha- why have you done this to us?" - Pickle

[@jav05]

So, I recently heard about the 2004 Smokey the Bear Ballon Incident where a hot air balloon, crashed into the KKOB Radio Towers. Now the people who where in the basket of the Ballon were safe and they started to climb down. The engineers immediately turned of the Antennas but in the news segment on KATV stated that the people who were climbing down were safe if the Antenna was on until they step foot on ground. Everyone did survive but I still have questions. Im not 100% sure but if the Antenna was still on when they got on it, why didn't they get hirt. Why if they step foot on the ground would they have possibly died due to being exposed to the energy of the tower?

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Depends on the specifics, but that seems to be a 50kW tower. They would at minimum get a very decent RF burn unless they jumped off the tower as far from it as they could! If you ever find yourself on an energized tower, best bet is to call the engineering staff and have them turn it off before attempting the dismount!

[@warrengreen5670]

It's called plasma acoustics. The arc (plasma) expands and collapses causing the surrounding air to also expand and collapse (modulation) which creates sound.

[@sterlingodeaghaidh5086]

I bet the radio host had a blast playing along with your experiment.

[@mariaa.7624]

These experiments are nuts and I fcking love that

[@erikehood]

Well done. I really enjoyed the video.

[@austinrich8343]

It may have something to do with the chemical composition of the pickle changing upon ignition from the RF. It would be interesting also to study RF propagation across different chemical mediums.

[@asf130thecompany7]

Didin't knew you were onto this kind of thing :D Well you learn everyday :D

[@morpheus_9]

I have my ham radio license and this was very interesting! I got it when I was 12, I need to get it renewed soon.

[@jwillisbarrie]

Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf

[@k8byp]

EXCELLENT CONTENT. Note his distance from the tower...for a reason. And note the hot dog and pickle are grounded, not his end of the pole. And avoid even touching a fence around a BC antenna tower. Theres no guarantee each wire is grounded. The tx wont much notice. The current shunts cores (?) are showing up " hot"! Foldback? I assume the power drop was active foldback in the PA and not just RF dissipation?

[@k8byp]

PS as to arcing, similar happens at the top of the tower with corona discharge which is also RF energy, just not necessarily the same frequency nor from the PA. Cirona vaporizes a corona hat eventually.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yep, the Transmitter/PA stage was hitting current limiting protections, according to Nautel design engineers performing as designed-and apparently they've done much more extreme tests on their transmitters, shorting the path even closer to the transmitter to ground!

[@johncworden]

That XR-12 still looks like new. They've treated it well. We still build XR-3 and XR-6.

[@mattdeese298]

That’s pretty interesting. I work at the Ludwig factory. We use RF generators to heat up our drum molds to dry glue.

[@VR-Fanatic666]

Damn I was playing around one of these as a kid in a place we broke into…. Glad we didn’t climb it, never knew, there wasn’t a single sign warning us either

[@GeerlingEngineering]

Many towers aren't AM, or energized (they just have antennas mounted at the top), so those towers wouldn't fry you while touching the base. Always better to just not touch them at all, but some towers are less dangerous than others (but all should have warning signs, even if they're completely off-they can receive enough energy to give you a nice shock, in certain scenarios, especially if grounding systems are broken).

[@brendakoldyk1647]

Maybe Try to put a RF amp meter in line to see how much current is going through the hot dog. I worked at a AM station at the time and I threw some plants on the spark gap and there was a orange flame that came off it while weed wacking around the tower. This was the old Harris Bc5h 5 killowatt transmitter 30 years ago. Fun times

[@1nsanejochem]

When I was about 12, I used to hang around at a local radio amateur shack, an uncle of mine went there weekly. He told me once that he’d treat warts with this. Didn’t believe him until now.

[@KESSLERPARK]

Incredibly interesting stuff, thanks.

[@paulsradiohacks]

love your channel so much fun and facts...

[@johncline7518]

Thanks guys! Fascinating!!!

[@syberphish]

The hotdog would seem to be more solid, whereas the pickle is more watery. I would think once the pickle has evaporated most of the water inside it probably starts to sound poor, where the hotdog is more difficult to vaporize the water out of it so easily; under the heat it probably retains it's form/viscosity better.

[@AB8Y_radio]

Well now you have to test if kielbasa translates to Polish

[@Neuroszima]

Popieram XD

[@glennschlorf1285]

Having gotten Bit by my 100w HF rig one time I dont think Ill be testing this out at any AM transmitter site anytime soon