⚡️💡Under the transmission line experiments.

We used florescent light tubes to peak tune the final radio frequency output tube on a commercial AM radio station back in the 1980s. The brighter the flash, the more signal was being delivered to our antenna.

Back in the 80's we ran a permanent electric fence around a large farm I was working for. Part of that fence ran under some large power lines coming from a power plant and once that fence was insulated it was hot without being connected to a charger.

When I was in the Navy back in the 70’s we used to strap fluorescent tubes near high powered radio sets when tuning up. The flickering lamp was a good indication we were transmitting. Also I rembet bring on a ship within 10 miles if a very high powered VLF transmitter and all the fluorescent lamps that were off would flash on and off.

I want to clarify somethi g i see in a lot of the comments. Its not power that is just seeping away lost forever. When you introduce an inductive circuit next to another it creates a back emf and actually opposes the flow of current in the power line, thereby causing resistance and effectively taking power. Without the light bulb in place, the emf from the power line has no opposition and therefore doesnt see a resistance on the line.

I'd parked my car under some very high voltage transmission lines in California right where the lines sagged. It was next to a creek running from a hot spring. I had gotten out of the water and sat on a small aluminum beach chair in the dirt next to my car. I touched my car and felt a pretty good voltage. Definitely made me pull back. It would have been interesting to measure the voltage with a meter but I didn't have one. The car was acting as part of a capacitor coupling through the air. There was a radio station in Hampton Virginia the early 80's called WPEX that put up fluorescent tubes on the tower so that it spelled out "X 15". It looked cool at night from Rt. 64. with the bulbs lit up from the RF of the antenna.

3 ways to grab power leakage. Capacitive, just a long plate of copper insulated from ground, inductive, a bunch of rebar or similar wrapped with copper wire, or ion capture, an array of insulated spikes. The first gives the highest voltage. The second gives the most current. The third is highly dependant on weather.

Thirty years ago I drove a clean garbage truck picking up recyclable cardboard. I was loading cardboard into my truck from a dumpster, which was positioned under large electrical wires. I mean LARGE. As I was doing this, my upper arm touched the dumpster, and I received a mild continuous shock. I can't imagine what that might do to people who actually live in houses situated under those wires.

a CB Radio properly tuned can illuminate a Fluorescent tube pretty well, i've done it and scared a friend of mine half to death with the demo, with a Linear amp the light was full brightness end to end and plenty of light to read by, and we did something similar when i was in Vo-Tech, we had some high-tension lines that ran across the campus, our instructor had a PVC Pipe with a fitting that was the right size to clip a Flouro tube into and hold it up in the air, with the other end going to the ground with just a tent stake on the end of it, it was i want to say a 10 or 12 foot chunk of Schedule 40 PVC and that tube lit up, not super bright, but bright enough you could see in the daylight, so it is doable, and its crazy what kind of power radiates as RF from things we use day-to-day, also i mentioned the CB Radio/base station with the Fluro tube, you can do the same thing by standing near an AM Transmitting station, or a SW station, that'll light a tube pretty good from not that far away (~100yds)

Awesome. I've been wanting to do that for about 30 years now. Thanks!

Great stories from the commenters and electricians. Hope you keep up your experiments.

I remember riding my dirt bike under the transmissions lines in a dry summer and feeling the hair on the back of my neck raise up.

I might suggest, as a test, is to see how many meters of "fence" cable it takes to sufficiently test your lamps brightness,instead of the aluminum antenna.(10, 20, 30 meters) Also there are two contact points on each end of the lamps. Did you use antenna and ground on the same end when you tested them? Would a capacitor keep the lamps from flickering? It sounds as if you can do several experiments if you want! It is a unique lab you have!

We did it as kids with 8 foot tubes. They really lit up on high humidity days.

I knew of a guy that used florescent lighting in all but the bedrooms of the house. He lived very close to an AM radio station. He used his TV antenna tower for the pickup point. It was very strange to see glowing tubes simply taped to the ceiling.

Thanks for sharing, Merry X-mas and Happy New Year. Cheers.

My father had a horse farm with electric fences running under 250K voltage lines. The fence charger would burn out if we tried to hook one up. The induced voltage from the powerlines was enough to function as a stigmatizing deterrent but you could tell that it had higher joules. The current took the better part of a minute to build back up after you touched it. What I did for an experiment was to lower the volts with a transformer, because it was alternating current after all. What I wish I had progressed to was the use of a diode rectifier like you have there. Then, one of those variable-input buck transformers that takes in 50 to 13 volts DC and puts out a consistent 12 volts DC. Then, I could have had one of those 12-volt supercapacitor banks like some Youtubers have used in place of a car battery. Then you have some nice standby power and can charge a battery also. What is interesting about this technical challenge is that if the Earth's magnetic field goes away for 3,000 years like it is said to be able to do, then solar and cosmic electromagnetism will do this to the entire sky. It would be an "EMP disaster," but the effect would be more sustained and consistent. Therefore, any suspended wire would become a free energy collector and flourescent tubes would become the light bulbs of choice. The electrical system would have to be re-tooled, obviously.

I remember seeing a tv reporter hold up a tube in each hand under a large set of power lines in daylight and you could see them glowing. That was in the ‘80s.

You could probably do the same thing anywhere to be honest....if not with the same set up...with a slightly higher antenna! Great video man!

My former work I worked at for 20 years had high voltage lines running down the main street in front of the business and I always heard them buzzing when it was wet or icy out

I stopped under some very large ones that led to Los Angeles, and you could get about 1/2 inch of spark to jump between your fingers and the car body. It was also loud enough to hear the sound from the spark, even next to a busy road. It was strong enough that I worried about having electronics out of the car.