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I'd like to be the first to congratulate you on your recent fark. As a long time reader of both, I never imagined any crossover. Different sides of the internet and all. I haven't read the comments yet, but I'm expecting a hilarious amount of posts speaking from an authortative position with a weak grasp of TC principles, should be a laugh.
Hope you've got a good deal on your site's bandwidth costs :)
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Peter's site is hosted on the same server as 4hv.org, along with a lot of other members' home sites, including mine. It does offer a very good deal on bandwidth. We all thought it was absolutely hilarious the first time he got Digg'd, causing 40GB of traffic in a single day and slowing 4hv and all of our sites to a crawl.
It seems that he has got a taste for this kind of attention though, what with the Sauron's Aura follow-up, and now his new car alarm It wouldn't surprise me if this was another of his tricks.
P.S. You can do no end of impressive tricks with Tesla coils. But to any other members who might be trying to beat Peter in the "Look at me" stakes, remember what happened to Henry Transtrom and don't try anything too extreme.
Registered Member #146
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 04:21AM
Location: Austin Tx
Posts: 1055
P.S. You can do no end of impressive tricks with Tesla coils. But to any other members who might be trying to beat Peter in the "Look at me" stakes, remember what happened to Henry Transtrom and don't try anything too extreme.
You mean... like this?
That was during a shoot for my friends movie hes been working on (the video itself was from my point of view, using my camera, the actual film will be of much higher quality). I of course must discourage others from trying such stunts. Ive been working with HV for ~7 years now, and my friend in the suit has been building tesla coils for the same length of time (we arent "newbs"). The shoot went perfectly fine from the technical point of view, but we arent sure if its good enough for the movie.
This was filmed over a year ago, so no, it wasnt trying to compete with anyone for crazy tesla coil stunts.
Registered Member #89
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145
P.S. You can do no end of impressive tricks with Tesla coils. But to any other members who might be trying to beat Peter in the "Look at me" stakes, remember what happened to Henry Transtrom and don't try anything too extreme.
It's kind of scary, that he was killed just by the output of coil, by a single arc to ground. Wich simply had to happen sooner or later. It makes that look to me like most of his 'tricks' were close suicide attempts.
That was during a shoot for my friends movie hes been working on (the video itself was from my point of view, using my camera, the actual film will be of much higher quality). I of course must discourage others from trying such stunts. Ive been working with HV for ~7 years now, and my friend in the suit has been building tesla coils for the same length of time (we arent "newbs"). The shoot went perfectly fine from the technical point of view, but we arent sure if its good enough for the movie.
This makes me worried. As the point of Conner's post, it doesn't matter if you are a noob or have 50 years of experience with tesla coils. The faraday suit was still your friend's only protection. If it failed for any reason, considering power of the coil, I imagine results would be really bad.
Sure, accidents are less lkely to happen with experienced than newbies, but I still don't think anything is worth gambling with your life that way.
I must admit this also looks like a suicide attempt to me. I hope you goys will comfort me about that. :(
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
That Henry Transtrom guy was killed through pure bad luck and bad planning. It wasn't the output of the coil alone that did it, either. As far as we know, it just so happened that an arc went from his head and connected with a grounded metal roof beam, while an arc from the topload he was sitting on connected with his pole pig-powered primary circuit. Effectively he more or less got a pole pig connected between his head and his butt.
Transtrom is now the #1 case study in how NOT to do the Lightning Man stunt. It can be made far safer if you study all the mistakes people made in the past, and learn from them, and get paranoid about the design and quality of your equipment.
Solid-state coil technology may make it safer too: if you mess up the same way Transtrom did, you only get 600V connected to your butt instead of 11,000, and the resistance of streamers is high enough that you might well survive a Transtrom-like incident.
If anyone from 4hv wants to do Lightning Man, we won't stop you, but for legal reasons, we can't be seen to encourage or advise you too much either I knew that Steve Ward and his friend were doing that at the time, and I wasn't any more worried about him than I was about, say, Steve Irwin getting killed by a stingray If the Faraday suit failed, I expected the result would be some pretty painful RF burns, but not much serious harm.
Peter's Car of Sauron is obviously pretty safe because he is inside a Faraday cage. I apologise for being mean to him too, I'm just being an old grouch
Registered Member #89
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145
That Henry Transtrom guy was killed through pure bad luck and bad planning. It wasn't the output of the coil alone that did it, either. As far as we know, it just so happened that an arc went from his head and connected with a grounded metal roof beam, while an arc from the topload he was sitting on connected with his pole pig-powered primary circuit. Effectively he more or less got a pole pig connected between his head and his butt.
I assume this could only happen if primary circuit was ungrounded to save on transformer's insulation. Practically, this was also pretty suicidal to sit on a coil configured as such.
If I figured it right, the MMC on steve's coil isn't split, so there's also a chance of such an 'event' to happen. AN even if it was, it's not worth to have your life at hands of few mm of dielectric. Storage caps also discharge at much higher current than pig and can put higher voltage over secondary Z.
But, simply since voltage is much lower and DC, Solid state probably is safer than pigs.
Peter's Car of Sauron is obviously pretty safe because he is inside a Faraday cage. I apologise for being mean to him too, I'm just being an old grouch
Nah, I don't think so; right now I seem much more grouch than you. You always bring the good atmosphere with your posts. I hope little running-off-thread for sake of safety wasn't bad...
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
As a certified OSHA high voltage trainer with my company and having looked through the statistics of electrical related accidents in the past several years, almost all fatalities occurred to those most experienced (years of experience) with electrical equipment and safety procedures.
Steve Ward mentioned that he felt he could perform this experiment safely because of his many years of experience, but when it comes down to it, the years of experience doesn't really mean anything. Even the most experienced and safety conscious person can have a brief lack of judgement, or inattention to detail. And that can kill!
If I was Chris, i'd certaintly remove those links to those videos from this website. Thats all Chris needs is someone to get seriously hurt from an idea they saw on this newsgroup and say, "well, i saw people doing it on 4hv!"
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Congratulations to Tesladownunder
It wouldn't surprise me if this 
I knew that Steve Ward and his friend were doing that at the time, and I wasn't any more worried about him than I was about, say, Steve Irwin getting killed by a stingray 
