Send wireless power long range with lasers and balloons

newscientist.com ^ | 06 December 2013 by | Hal Hodson

[BenLurkin]

An idea for sending power over long distances via lasers and balloonsMovie Camera could help provide emergency power where it is needed. Stephen Blank of the New York Institute of Technology wants to use aerostats, military-grade balloons, to send hundreds of kilowatts of power over several hundred kilometres.

[Gene Eric]

I propose catapulting batteries.

[Bobalu]

BTW: Here is an image of the exact model Philco Tombstone farm radio I won in the bet.

I like these old Philco farm radios as they have permanent magnet speakers that you can drive from the audio out on a PC or an mp3 player. Most AC powered radios from that era (early 30's) had electromagnetic coils as the speaker magnet that needed to be powered before the speaker could function.

[Bobalu]

Oh, anyone can be taught to repair these lovely old radios in just a few hours time. Many times the problem is something obvious that has overheated and can be easily spotted.

The next most likely cause is old non-functioning capacitors and they can easily be replaced with modern equivalents.

If it's an old set with high-voltage filaments then it may be a bad heater cord. They used to drop 120vac or 120vdc down to a useable level by having the radios power cord resistively reduce the voltage to the set! The cords would get mighty hot too!...all this to save the cost of a transformer. It was a fireman's nightmare and can be repaired and made safer by placing a power resistor internally to take the cords place.

Then there is the chance of a bad tube. You need a tube tester for that and I recommend the old military TV7 series.

Here is an old video I put up for an ebay listing years ago to sell an extra TV7 I had. The old transmitter in the video was my first ham transmitter that I built from junk...a real squealer with 3.5 watts output on 40/80.

My first ham transmitter..has pwr supply on the board