[NewCandle] Schlicher 'drive'

[Kyle R. Mcallister]

Hi all,

Alright, this might be a bit lengthy, so I apologize in advance for 
that. I'll try to answer the questions that Nick posed, and explain a 
bit more of what (little) I know about the monster in the attic. 
(well...one of my many monsters)

First off, the patent on USPTO is (if I remember right) corrupt. There's 
a couple pages that are duplicated, and a couple not included at all. 
The whole thing can be obtained from Google patents, with the originally 
left-out pages there. I don't know if Schlicher's theory is correct or 
not. I'm not very theoretically minded, I just tend to want to apply 
current and let the thing do its business. Anyone here able to comment 
on that?

I DO have a copy of Schlicher's paper submitted to the AIAA. I don't 
know exactly how legal it is for me to post it, as I did pay for it. But 
if there's a request to just...you know...peek at it...

I know about the Stavros Dmitriou thing. I don't know if the effect is 
related. It might be. Stavros' thing was much lower current, and much 
higher frequency, if I recall right. Schlicher's thing uses kA's of 
current, at some cycles per second. Exactly WHAT cycles per second, I 
don't know. Comments on that to follow below...

As far as John Schnurer loaning me the driver, that's impossible. 
Unfortunately, he died last May. He had a long, hard fight with 
Parkinsons, and apparently was overdosed with medication. It reacted 
badly, and he (as far as anyone will tell me) had a massive heart 
attack. His posting style on Vortex reflects the progression of the 
disease. I knew him since 1998. He was a very good friend, and taught me 
many things. He even mailed me the Schlicher antenna that I have.

John said the thing would, when set on a wooden platform and suspended 
by four tethers to a point about 6 feet above, push itself a half inch 
forward when pulsed correctly. If the pulses were timed right, he 
maintained that the thing would hold itself forward at an angle, 
sometimes even more than an inch. Given the size of this thing (about 2 
feet long, made of copper), that's a pretty impressive thrust. As far as 
powering it, I tried make-and-break with a car battery, and only 
succeeded in destroying the battery. Advance Auto Parts gave me another 
one, but of course, I didn't tell them I was trying to operate a space 
drive with it.

John suggested two approaches to running the thing. The first was what 
he usually did. Wind a toroidal pulse transformer, using a core of black 
steel rebar tie wire, and pulse some DC through it. A crowbar and/or 
steering diode on the secondary makes sure that things are going in the 
right direction polarity-wise. That's where my first problems developed...

Switching enough DC current through the primary to get a nice, couple 
volt at a few kA pulse out the secondary proved a pain in the caboose. I 
tried rectifying wall current and shunting it through the primary with a 
  set of relays. Yeah, that was a bad idea. The relays simply exploded 
in a flash of green light. I tried limiting current with some halogen 
lights in series with the relays. That worked, sort of, but the relays 
still spot welded themselves, despite putting antispark caps across them 
and then NIB magnets to 'blow out' the arcs. The best results were 
putting steering diodes before and after the relays, so that back EMF 
from the primary could not cause the arcing. But then, the field 
collapse characteristics of the transformer seemed to be altered, and 
the output went to crap. I thought about using SCRs to switch the 
current, but I hate SCRs with a passion. I think everyone has a 
component that hates them, and SCR's are that one for me.

The transformer itself was about 8 inches across, toroidal core, made of 
four rolls of black iron baling wire. This was wrapped with a layer of 
medical cloth tape, then black vinyl tape. The primary was 200 turns of 
#10AWG THHN insulated stranded copper wire. That was horrible to wind. 
The secondary was 4 turns of #00 stranded/braided copper machine wire. 
If you plug the primary directly into the wall, 120VAC, the thing hums 
nicely. Touching the secondary wires together makes them glow orange and 
begin to melt. John's critique of my transformer: too big. But, I don't 
know much about pulse transformers, so I didn't know how to size it. 
Anyone have any ideas on this?

The second approach he and I discussed was to have a circuit charging 
capacitors (maybe banks of photoflash caps) to a few hundred volts, and 
discharging them sequentially though the antenna. The pulses then should 
be brief, and of very high current. Getting the capacitors proved a 
problem, as they aren't that cheap, especially to someone like me. I 
used to get them for very cheap, pennies on the dollar, at the local 
pharmacy, from their photo shop, out of disposable cameras. But then, 
the larger corporate conglomerate pharmacy bought them out, and 
capitalized the whole thing, so now they won't even give them to me for 
any price. Safety, you know. Pfeh.

Some group operating supposedly for NASA tried to reproduce the 
Schlicher work, and didn't do a very good job of it, in mine and John's 
opinion. The general tone of their article is of trying to disprove it, 
not see if it worked. They did a few tests, didn't find anything (or 
maybe they did? They mention a few unexplained anomalous forces...) and 
then go on to theoretically prove how the thing couldn't have worked in 
the first place. I have that paper too, if anyone wants to read it.

The NASA antenna didn't have prism conductors inside it, I don't think. 
The one I have DOES have them. John said they are important. Schlicher's 
patent and paper says they are important. But until this thing is tested 
properly, I don't think we'll know.

If anyone wants me to, I'll post pictures to my web site, of the device, 
the transformer, etc. Maybe together we can figure out how to drive this 
thing.

--Kyle