Aaron said:
Is it possble to use an inductor with a stepdown transformer to generate
power by using the power ouput of a ham radio through it's antenna? My
friend states his antenna is a 40Watt'er. If I can, about how much power
can i expect to gather using a n inductor.
Well, the transmitter may be 40 watts, but the antenna is usually not
rated that way.
All of the radiated energy can theoretically be recovered from a
transmitting antenna. The problem is how to capture it all. At a
distance, the instrument used to capture radiated energy is another
antenna, and tiny fractions of the radiated power can often be captured
halfway around the globe.
A stepdown transformer will lower the voltage produced at the antenna,
but that really has nothing to do with the amount of radiated energy you
capture.
If you use a simple inductor as an antenna to capture radiated energy,
you will find that it will probably not be possible to situate the
inductor so as to capture very much, since the antenna may be radiating
in many or even all directions! If the inductor gets too close to the
antenna, it will affect the antenna's properties, and that further
complicates the exercise.
Does any of that help?
Chuck
