Forget about the feasibility of this question for the moment.
Could a column of mercury inside a tube of glass be used as an
antenna?

Sure, I don't see why not. You'd have to put up with a bit of tuning
drift, as the resonant frequency would drop in hot weather or after
you'd had your legal-maximum CW station running for a while :-)

There was a running gag over in rec.audio.high-end a few years ago,
about the ultimate speaker cables: mercury-filled surgical rubber
tubing.

Expensive, trouble-prone, toxic, and prone to cause unexpected visits
from the hazmat team. Be the first on your block!

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

"Dave Platt" wrote in message
...
...a bunch of stuff, including this:

, toxic,

I resent this. I played with the stuff as a kid and there is absolutely no
adverse side eff..ffe..ffe..ffe ects at..t..t.. all.
--
Steve N, K,9;d, c. i My email has no u's.

Dave Platt wrote:
There was a running gag over in rec.audio.high-end a few years ago,
about the ultimate speaker cables: mercury-filled surgical rubber
tubing.

That's exactly what I thought of when I saw this subject line. For
those who missed it in 1987:

http://tinyurl.com/ywjd8

My favorite response in that 17-year-old thread:

I can see the review by Anthony Cordesman now:

"This wire lends a liquid transparency to strings. The fluid quality
of horns has to be heard to be believed. There is a silvery
quality to the brass, with no sign of the hard-edged, coppery
sound normally associated with speaker cable...

73,

John NU3E

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 21:28:07 -0400, John DeGood wrote:

Dave Platt wrote:
There was a running gag over in rec.audio.high-end a few years ago,
about the ultimate speaker cables: mercury-filled surgical rubber
tubing.

That's exactly what I thought of when I saw this subject line. For
those who missed it in 1987:

http://tinyurl.com/ywjd8

My favorite response in that 17-year-old thread:

I can see the review by Anthony Cordesman now:

"This wire lends a liquid transparency to strings. The fluid quality
of horns has to be heard to be believed. There is a silvery
quality to the brass, with no sign of the hard-edged, coppery
sound normally associated with speaker cable...

A fine example of what Herb Caen, in the SF Chronicle, used to
refer to as "the prismatic luminescence school of wine critics".

Has anyone actually tried it yet?

Considering only a drop in a neon sign or vapor lamp makes the
difference between not working at radiating a tremendous amount of
energy, it's worth a few careful experiments.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 20:42:02 -0400, Bob wrote:

Has anyone actually tried it yet?

Considering only a drop in a neon sign or vapor lamp makes the
difference between not working at radiating a tremendous amount of
energy, it's worth a few careful experiments.

haha, good joke.

Advertizing Yagi "Neon" tube arrays as STEALTH antennas.
Your are beating my own inventions of crazy antenna designs.

Won't work too well actually, at least not for reception, because the
irregular flickering of the plasma will induce a very large amount
of noise.

w.
--
On the Internet nobody knows that I am a dog.

I was not suggesting using an entire neon sign or vapor lamp as an
antenna. I was pointing out 'the presence of a tiny drop of mercury' is
required for these devices to work. A catalyst perhaps?

Therefore, let's say our antenna was a piece of wire or metal tubing was
inside another non-metallic tube, and a small amount of mercury was also
in the tube. Would the mercury have a desirable effect? Remember, we're
not talking about tremendous amounts of power here. Your typical 4'
fluorescent tube is a 32 to 40 watt device, and there are much lower
output tubes as well. The primary excitation inside the tube is due to
high voltage, not high current.

So, it may not be too far fetched to build a few designs and see what
performance is observed.

Bob wrote:
I was not suggesting using an entire neon sign or vapor lamp as an
antenna. I was pointing out 'the presence of a tiny drop of mercury' is
required for these devices to work. A catalyst perhaps?

Therefore, let's say our antenna was a piece of wire or metal tubing was
inside another non-metallic tube, and a small amount of mercury was also
in the tube. Would the mercury have a desirable effect? Remember, we're
not talking about tremendous amounts of power here. Your typical 4'
fluorescent tube is a 32 to 40 watt device, and there are much lower
output tubes as well. The primary excitation inside the tube is due to
high voltage, not high current.

So, it may not be too far fetched to build a few designs and see what
performance is observed.

Both neon and fluorescent lights work in basically the same way; something
is ionized with high voltage and low pressure and glows.

Neon lights produce light directly from the gas. The color is determined by
the gas. Common gases are neon, argon and krypton.

Fluorescent lights have mercury vapor in them which glows in the
ultraviolet. The inside of the tube is coated with a phosphor which
glows in the visible region when excited by the UV.

Black lights are fluorescent lights without the phosphor.

In either case, the voltage is high and the current is low, meaning the
resistance is high; hardly a good canidate for an antenna element.

Not to mention the small problem that your antenna would contain a
spark gap...

--
Jim Pennino

Remove -spam-sux to reply.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 20:29:20 GMT, wrote:
A fine example of what Herb Caen, in the SF Chronicle, used to
refer to as "the prismatic luminescence school of wine critics".
A wonderful columnist.