Re: Zapping a potato field!!

I've been watching this thread for a while. Allow me to take a swing at some of the issues.

Credentials: 5-year EE degree, 9 years as an engineer at a TV station. Did you know that absolutely pure water is an almost perfect insulator?

An armchair analysis of the mechanics of irradiating a farm sufficiently to affect the cellular biology of just about anything indicates that this probably will not work. It would be great if it did, but consider these items.

1. The farm field already is being bombarded by all manner and frequency of electromagnetic radiation. TV and radio stations, cell towers, and power lines can combine for some pretty impressive field strengths, yet parasite problems persist. Actually, the same point applies to humans at home. So there must be something fundamentally inadequate with broadcast EM fields.

2. Maybe it is the field strength. The sensitivity of a radio, a measure of the amount of electric field gradient needed to receive a signal with a designated clarity above the background noise, is measured in volts-per-meter, or v/m. Actually, it is measured in microvolts-per-meter. Without any interference from nearby stations, it is fairly easy to pick up a radio station 100 or 200 miles away from the transmitter. At these distances, the field strength can be under 100 uV/m, 100 microvolts per meter, for a clean signal recepetion. That's not much of a signal.

3. Compare this to a zapper. Round numbers: 8 volt output, 6 foot tall person with an electrode in each hand. 8 volts/2 meters is 4v/m. That's an enormous field gradient. To maintain that across a 1 mile wide field would require a) a transmitter too large to be portable, and b) a ground connection impossible to be portable.

4. There is nothing I've read which suggests that the "zapper effect" would work with a radiated field, as opposed to direct contact. So, inducing 2 or 3 milliamps of electron flow (current) into the earth over a 1 mile distance would take a lot of juice even with a direct contact system. I doubt that it is possible with any sized transmitter (non-contact system).

5. About that AM (amplitude modulation)... Lets keep the numbers simple. Assume a 1MHz carrier (one megahertz, or one million cycles per second, almost dead center in the middle of the AM broadcast band) and a 1500Hz Zapper signal (typical of the "improved" designs). The spectrum of this signal, with 100% modulation, consists of the 50% of the total transmitter energy at the carrier frequency, and 25% power in each of the sidebands. So, for a 10,000 watt transmitter, that's 5,000 watts at 1 MHz, 2,500 watts at 998.5 KHz, and 2500 watts at 1.0015 MHz. Notice that in this basic example there is ZERO energy down at 1,500 Hz. Without a circuit element to peak-detect the AM waveform, there will be no energy at normal Zapper frequencies. There is nothing in normal cellular biology which acts as a semiconductor in every single cell. So there is no way to "detect" the Zapper signal riding on the carrier. Yes, some of the stories about detecting radio broadcasts with a tooth filling are in fact true. BUT, the detected signal is microvolts or millivolts in amplitude, not whole-volts, the range is extremely limited, and it takes an artificial implant (carborundum in a tooth filling) to make it happen. Nothing in the human - or any other - body naturally acts as a semiconductor in a localized way to rectify an AM carrier.

6. There is no such thing as "positive offset" in broadcast electromagnetic waves. Since this appears to be at the heart of all things Zapper, I see this as a significant problem.

As for the comments about the FCC, monopolies, conspiracies, and inalienable rights... I've lived on both sides of this issue for all of my adult life, and I disagree with just about everything said. This isn't a debate forum, but I think the rise of Cable TV and Satellite Radio show that the market is way more market-driven than government-suppressed. BTW, the FCC limit on an unlicensed AM-band transmitter is about 1/10th watt, unchanged for decades, and the HAM bands are alive and well.

For those of you who are crying out for historical trivia... There is no Channel 1 in US broadcast television. Why? Because the radio AMATEURS succeeded in their fight for a slice of the regulated airspace just for them. The 10 meter HAM band occupies the spectrum space originally allocated for broadcast TV channel 1.

ak