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Build Your Own HERF Gun
James writes "Rostislav Persion from Voltage Labs has successfully constructed a HERF gun (a device like EMP but directional) in his home that is capable of stalling cars at a distance and crashing computers as well. He has videos of the device in action as it lights up LED's at a distance and triggers motion detectors. Theres also a bunch of other security stuff and science stuff which is quite interesting and controversial, such as cell phone tracking, mood altering audio signals, gyro guns, and other things of this nature. The site owner was also featured in US News Magazine and MTV for some of his work."
Here it is: mirror
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
Magnetrons are the main component of microwave ovens. Beware -- unshielded units are dangerous. You can end up sterile, or dead... or both.
-Chas
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
They already have made one of these deals. It's like a spike strip but is really a mat that you position on the road. IIRC the officer that laid it out waits for the fleeing vehicle to drive over it and then activates the mat. He hits the button right as the car's engine is over the mat and it's jacks up the ignition system. The car dies instantly and rolls to a stop. The problem with any system like this is that 1) it's expensive and 2) it can only be used on vehicles moving slowly. You don't dare use this mat, spike strips, or the pitt maneuver on a vehicle going highway speeds. The car could easily lose control and cause a major accident. You have to do it when they are going slow like when they take a turn of some sorts. Yeah, they've built these gizmos already but they are expensive. Last I heard they were only being tested in the UK. Good idea though. I wonder how much damage (in $$$) this does to the car though. It's relatively easy to destory the computer system in a car. 9 times out of 10 you can do this by hooking jumper cables up backwards (yes, some people don't know how to use them properly. most people don't know which vehicle you should hook them up to first either). Frying the computer system in a car is essentially totaling the car. The replacement parts almost always cost more then the vehicle is worth. :-(
The magnetos DO produce electricity. The spark is an electrical one. The mags are basically self-enclosed generators/coils/points/distributors. The main thing is that they are separate from the aircraft's non-ignition electrical systems (unlike a car) and there are two ignition circuits per engine.
Having said that, I doubt EMP unless it was *really* powerful would have a noticeable effect on the mags.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Magnetrons are the main component of microwave ovens. Beware -- unshielded units are dangerous. You can end up sterile, or dead... or both.
Oh my god.
Before the dot-com meltdown, I used to design radar equipment for a major defense contractor. Radar systems use microwave energy - which is just radio waves within an arbitrary range that we call "microwave", like we call some radio waves "VHF" and others "UHF".
A microwave oven is simply a ~500W unmodulated carrier wave at ~2.4GHz. Neither the power nor the frequency is terribly precise.
A magnetron is a vacuum tube used to generate microwave-frequency RF. It's a special kind of directly-heated diode surrounded by a very strong magnet, hence the term "magnetron".
It is utterly and completely harmless (except to magnetic media and the magnetic stripe on your security pass, from personal experience) until you apply power. Typically, a microwave oven magnetron wants about 6V to light the filament and about 6kV anode; in pulsed navigational radar, it's usually 6V to light the filament and about 10kV to pulse the magnetron in 25kW 12GHz pulses at 3kHz (think of AM modulation).
If you take a direct blast from a radar, it's unlikely to make you sterile, or to cause cancer. Those are caused by ionizing radiation (ie. nuclear and X-Ray). This is non-ionizing; essentially just a radio wave. In the S and X band radar ranges - and presumably everything in between - the primary damage would be to the corneas of the eyes. And it burns - I got it to my torso once, no permanent damage, just like a bad sunburn.
In other words, don't operate your microwave oven with the door open, and don't look into the waveguide.
Oh, and don't play with the power supply which runs the magnetron. Anything capable of supplying enough current to make 500W at 6kV (ie. power supply of a home microwave oven) is capable of setting fire to your skin. And the capacitors in a microwave oven hold a charge for a while - don't play with them.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Erm, probably as much as the radar at the airport, which has a power output more than twenty times than the magnetron of a microwave oven. You know, the magnetron thingie used in microwaves was invented by the British for use in radars. It's not some magical death-ray or something.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Negative...putting a bullet into a plane's skin would not cause the widespread damage that this electrical weapon would cause. It's quite possible that the bullet would pass through and not be noticed until landing. Plus, hitting a plane at a few hundred feet altitude moving 150 mph is not an easy feat. This weapon hits instantaneously and merely needs to be pointed and clicked at its target. I'm actually surprised applications such as this have not been adapted to air defense.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Even hydraulic actuators have electromechanical servo valves...
Close, but not always true. Having worked with several kinds of aircraft, both old and older (F-16, F-5, Dassult Jetfalcon and C-130 to mention the fixedwings), I know for a fact that while a fly-by-wire system, ie; a system where the controllsignals are transmitted via electric signals, have electromechanical servo valves. Every fly-by-real-wire (aka fly-by-steelrope) system I've worked on however, have purely mechanical servovalves, operated by what we refers to as a 'quadrant' - a simple mechanical analog computer which takes it inputs from the strearingsignal, the position of the aerodynamic surface (this is known as the feedback signal) and other sources (gear down or not & flaps down or not in the case of the F-5's tailplane and ailerons) and sends a mechanical signal to the servo which then opens a valve to operate the hydraulic sylinder. As the sylinder moves, the aerodynamic surface move, which changes the feedbacksignal, until the aerodynamic surface is at the commanded position and the output from the quadrant is nil - ie; closing the servovalve.
So yes, an HERF gun could possible mess up the servoactuators in modern aircraft - but it wouldn't and couldn't affect the servoactuators of a non-fly-by-electric-wire aircraft. It can still play merry hell with the avionics though.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I agree-Microwaves have only heating (non-ionising) effect on tissue. (Bad things happen though around metallic objects - like rings or wire-framed glasses - you could see some serious scoarching around these.
I do not understand how you can get radiation cataract (like from UV) - by time you start microwaving your eyes, your brain will probably have problem too. But testicles are extremely sensitive to heat damage, so the old myths about radar crews getting infertile from the exposure may have some basis. Certainly the radar people used to heat(microwawe) food attached to a stick in front of their radar dishes.
About home microwave repair: I heard a legend about a family man who fixed a broken microwave. And he blocked out the door sensor, turned microwave on, briefly sticked his hand in - and when he felt little warmth on his hand he said - now it works and turned off the microwave. But his hand hurt after this a bit and got swollen later at night. He ended up having it amputated - deep heat damage meesed it up beyond salvage. The heat sensors are on surface of the skin, but microwawes heated his hand from the bone, so it was too late for him when he finaly registered something.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Ah, right. Some german has already done this in order to shut down the noise (call it music, he doesn't though) coming out of cars.
Btw he writes for a popular german computer magazine (hence the site URL). The page is written in German, but if you look at the pictures, you'll get the idea.
SITE URL 01: www.VoltsAmps.com
SITE URL 02: www.VoltageLabs.com
SITE URL 03: www.SVBxLABS.com
Purpose:
This project is a continuation of the HERF003 project. It will be just like the HERF001 but many times more compact and efficient due to optimization and better calculated design. The actual device (excluding the horn antenna) will be about 50 times smaller in volume than HERF001 while having the same output power yet even better antenna efficiency and low VSWR. I hope to get much more detailed tests done on the effects and range of this device. Results and test images/videos will be posted allong with data sheets, radiation patterns and videos of test shots on dummy PC's.
Materials:
- 800W 2.458GHz Magnetron
- MOT
- 2kV @ 1.2uF capacitor
- 12kV piv microwave oven diode
- Sheet metal
- Sheet copper
- Other small parts
Details:
This is the basic magnetron coupling design. It is designed after the WR340 waveguide and can allow 1.70GHz to 2.60GHz to pass through with low attenuation. Of course my RF output will be within this range being 2.458GHz. The full dimentions of the waveguide are 4.318cm x 9.147cm x 8.636cm. The horn antenna is not as small as pictured. The magnetron feed will be inserted 1/4 the wavelength from the back of the waveguide.
a = 86.36mm
b = 43.18mm
c = 91.47mm
For a 15dB horn antenna:
p = 152.5mm
a1 = 320.6mm
b1 = 237.5mm
For a 18dB horn antenna:
p = 365.9mm
a1 = 452.9mm
b1 = 335.5mm
These are the dimentions of the plates that must be cut out in order to form a 15dB horn antenna.
These are the dimentions of the plates that must be cut out in order to form a 18dB horn antenna. Of course two of each plate must be made in order to make a complete horn antenna. The back end is then welded to the waveguide.
This is the circular waveguide and conical horn and its dimentions. The distance between the magnetron feed and the back waveguide wall should be fine tuned and adjusted as needed. The waveguide diameter is 3/4 the 2.458GHz wavelength and the distance from the magnetron feed and the base of the horn is 1/2 the wavelength.
This is the schematic of the HERF004 if powered from a 120VAC (or 240VAC) source. The circuit consists of a transformer and a voltage doubler cap/diode setup. A filiment heater is also needed.
This is the schematic of the HERF004 if powered from a 12VDC battery source. This design will provide less average RMS output power but will provide the same if not higher pulse peak power. Most magnetrons have the markings F, FA, C, or K next to the leads of which F, C and K are the magnetron cathode. Most microwave oven magnetrons will be marked with FA and F while radar magnetrons will only have one lead marked with either a K or a C. Since the magnetron I am planning to use is not a pulsed magnetron I will not construct a pulse forming network although it would help.
Videos:
herf004-test001.mpg (8.03MB)
This clip shows a series of herf004 shots at different distances. The video clip contains both video and audio. In the audio you can hear the 60Hz hum as it was induced into the camera via 2.458GHz carier wave.
herflight01.mpeg (0.98MB)
This clip shows HERF004 exciting the gas within a flourecent light tube causing it to glow.
herfmotion01.mpeg (0.97MB)
This clip shows HERF004 triggering the driveway motion detector of my home and the house next door.
Images:
This is the horn right after its construction. I cut it out of sheet copper and then welded each sheet together. My welding skills weren't that great so the plates may be misaligned by upto 4mm. The horn was designed to be 17dB since my sheet copper wasn't large enough to make an 18dB horn. I will probably make a conical horn after this one though and use it instead since this one turned out to be quite large.
First HERF004 victim, me. As I was drilling a hole for the magnetron feed the
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The difference between Slashdotting and a DDoS attack is simple but critical: the page requests in Slashdotting are legitmate, from users around the world who genuinely wish to see the site content. What is wrong with that? It's the difference between a store being swamped by customers---so much so that they can take no more until some leave---and that same store being overrun by squatters who just take up space without having anything to do with the business of the store, chasing out the real customers.
You're the network admin, if your site cannot gracefully handle a traffic spike due to sudden popularity it's YOUR PROBLEM. Fix it, don't complain about the cause of the increased page views. With a properly configured system, you should correctly see the influx of new visitors as a potential good, not something to be avoided. What can you do with the 24 hour notice, that you should not have already done? If configuring your server to handle a easily forseeable event can be done in a day, it should be done before the box even goes online, just like you would correct any other known potential problems. No, resources are not free, but that doesn't mean you have no options short of getting fatter pipes and bigger iron to handle load.
What you are really complaining about is that your system is poorly designed to start with but your bosses hadn't noticed yet, and that new traffic from Slashdot gave your laziness away and forced you to do some of the work you already get paid for. Suck it up and get busy, you've got the whole weekend.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Just wait for haloween >:)
A friend dealt with a local hot-rodder like this one year...
Take pumpkin and remove seeds, etc.
Fill with concrete
Set out by road in front of house (his street didn't have sidwalks)
Wait
ba-ba brump ba-ba brump...bwaaaaaaaaaaa-CRUNCH!!!!!
It was a LONG time before that car was able to terrorize the neighborhood.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
The output voltage of a microwave oven transformer (MOT) is more in the range of 2KV than 6 KV. Just as lethal (500mA) but a bit cheaper to manufacture. Otherwise BigBlockMopar told a good story.
I think I was talking about the A/K potential applied to a magnetron, not the output of the transformer itself. And indeed, that is in the range of 6kV.
How?
First off, notice that the diode and capacitor in most microwave ovens are not set up as a typical half-wave rectifier? They're actually configured as a voltage doubler. It's cheap and it depends on the diode action of the magnetron to work, but indeed, Vout = 2*Vin.
Now, remember also that we're rectifying AC, which is almost universally measured as RMS. Vdc = Vacrms * sqrt(2).
Therefore, an expression for our magnetron's anode voltage is closer to Vmag = 2 * Vtrans * sqrt(2), which we can simplify to Vmag = 2.828 * Vtrans.
Which, with a 2kV transformer, is 5.6kV. Near enough to 6kV.
In actual practice, I've seen microwave oven transformers rated for everything from 1800V to about 4000V. The 4kV one was in a Litton commercial microwave oven... very nice.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Some engines built for performance do not rely on an electrical "system," but use a magneto for spark. Any high voltage potential induced by a disruptive force may cause the engine to misfire momentarily in the worst case.
To kill or not to kill is this the answer?
t ml
4 s1.htm
http://liun.hektik.org/hightech/herf/shopping.h
Most of these ideas need a feedback system and highly intellegent processing to work, especially the ones that work on live humans.
The 'sticky' stuff would need to be 'intellegent' as well so as not to suffocate the victim.
The various pulse and sound weapons would need some sort of life sensor as feed back so that they would 'know' enough is enough.
That's been the problem with non-lethal wepons, as an aside a simple net doesn not generate federal funding.
Damn, I'm wrong about the net, here's a gov't shopping cart:
http://www.govexec.com/features/0501/0501s
Some comparisons of non lethal weapons between Hollydood (includes the news spews) and reality:
http://www.aele.org/technology2-01.html
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I saw something about this on Discovery or something. It was a joint effort. The Brits invented it, but it was too labor intensive to manufacture in sufficient volume. They took a unit to MIT, and a top engineer there made the military types very nervous taking this top secret device home to study it. He came up with a way to make them using laminated metal. In retrospect that seems like a simple idea. Maybe there was more to it than that. So, the Brits invented it, but the Yanks figured out how to make them cheaply by the truckload.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?