[Laser] Sky illumination experiment

[TWOSIG at aol.com]

At first I was going to suggest that a tube type transmitter, AM / CW might  
be cheaper and easier to modify to drive the florescent light.  With a  screen 
modulated transmitter just quench the oscillator and put in a bias to  
control the no signal (and max) current.  Then adjust the audio amp for the  way you 
would for a two tone test.  If you could get your hands on a plate  modulated 
transmitter, just remove the modulator and use the output of the plate  
modulation transformer to drive the light........   Hmmmmm.  you  might need a 
little bias current through the  transformer.........    Now this stuff is getting 
too old for  me.
 
What about taking an AM signal from a transmitter through an antenna  coupler 
(tuner) to drive the light?  Adjust the drive for the amount of  power you 
need.  If you have to, put the rf across a bridge diode, to drive  the light 
with modulated DC.
 
Not elegant, but probably less work than modifying a inverter.    You could 
even build the RF to DC conversion circuit in a metal bucket ( ala  "Cantenna" 
) to shield it from leaking RF and harmonics.
 
 
Hope the suggestion was worth thinking about.
 
 
James
 
N5GUI
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 7/5/2005 10:39:19 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
kbanke at qualcomm.com writes:


I'd like to eventually drive my  florescent lights with a cheap DC/AC power 
inverter.  Is anyone aware  of a 150 or more watt inverter that has a 
schematic available?  I want  to modify the circuit to drive it with the 
output from my laptop using  Laserscatter or some other multi-tone 
communication software.  I can  also certainly use the amplifier approach 
suggested by Tim which  will  require a step up transformer or other 
matching network.  At least that  can be done without having a schematic of 
the amp.
Thanks -Kerry N6IZW  -