[ARC5] Re: [Milsurplus] Re: Antenna tricks

[Brian Clarke]

Simple answer? Dunno.

However, let's do a few sums, you and I. 

Say the conducting, water-laden part of the abdomen of the dragonfly is 2" long [50 mm 
in the rest of the world], and say the dragonfly would fail terminally at 50 mA, and it 
has a body resistance of say 5 M Ohm - I just tried the resistance of my dry skin over 
2'' - then we require 250 kV. This comes to 125 kV per inch, average. But, the Volt 
gradient falls off exponentially and so the gradient would have to be much higher right 
on the tip of the antenna. Another wee point from this maths is that the ERP would 
need to be just a wee bit more than 100 W, say, 12.5 MW.

Even if the dragonfly would fail at 1 mA, the ERP is still just a bit over 100 W. [5 kW]

Just Ohm's law, fellas.

73 de Brian.
  Peter asked:

  What gradient would be required to reliably kill dragonflies?  Not that I want 
  to do that, just curious as to what kid of a field would have that effect.