The Lifters successful replications
Experimenters Log Book
created on October 10th, 2001- JLN Labs
All informations in this page are published free and are intended for private/educational purposes and not for commercial applications

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     Hello Mr Naudin,

Here's a complete success for your logs of the lifter experiment from Italy.
We used an old Compaq 14" colour monitor stated at 25KV EHT but I guess it was less due to it's age. The lifter is the basic dimension (21cms and 4cm plates, gap is around 33mm) It was interesting to notice how the lifter violently jumped up at power-on but then settled again and lifted back up after a few seconds (probably due to the EHT peak voltage at power up). Also after some experiments we noted that the side with the most corona phenomena (note jpg) was the one with the least thrust (initially the lifter would try to "top-over" that side). We had to decrease the gap from the initial 4cm to get enough thrust on the lead-in side but keep it slightly more open respect to the other 2 sides(!) for equalized effect. We used .22 section magnet wire. We also inserted a 270KOhm + a 340KOhm resistor in series and it still lifted even if with less stability. With the second resistance inserted it would jump up at power-on but eventually rest on the corona wire "lead-in" side after a few seconds. We could not get quite rid of the corona effect on the first side (corona wire lead-in). Thin wire certainly increases
localized corona wire flux density yielding better results; however I'm sure we must look at the secondary (or noumena) effects of different "corona wire" material. Now we would only like to see it lift off in near-vacuum conditions (<-90KPa Delta atmosferic pressure) where things would get really
interesting!

    May the quest continue!

Dear Mr. Naudin,

Good news from the Netherlands !
After reading about your lifter concept on the forum that I regularly visit I decided to make one myself because there were a lot of negative comments about the supposedly "hovering" device.   As I'm familiar with r/c model building I had all the materials and tools that I needed and with some hours of building the project was almost ready for lift-off.   I used an old 14" color monitor as power supply, but couldn't find a 250K Ohm 2 Watt resistor. So I bought the biggest I could find and that was just 39K Ohm but 5 Watt. This proved to work without any flaws and the monitor didn't get fried.  

The lifters dimensions are: 22x5cm triangular and the gap is 3 cm. My lifter is about 5 grams, but uses a ~0.1mm gold thread instead of a copper one and the legs are made from thin plastic tubes. After removing the balsa strips on the bottom the weight was reduced enough to get airborne. Pretty awesome, and because I only have an old webcam I decided to make some movies.   The discharges (sparks) did interfere with the camera so in the first movie it "hangs" for about 10 seconds but during the second movie there were no sparks and the movie was recorded without problems...  

Thanks for the amazing experiment !
Xentric

Mr. Jean-Louis Naudin,

My name is John Wilchynski. I live in Dunnellon, Florida USA.
I have managed to make a lifter work!
It has taken me longer than most but as you can see by the pictures it worked well.
The size is 400mm on each side. The power supply is 44,000 volts
The weight I do not know as I do not have a scale. I will continue to work on others and learn as I go.100grams here I come!

Thank You
John Wilchynski

Bonjour,

Après être tombé en "pâmoison" devant l'article de Sciences et Avenir, je
viens ce week end de construire mon lifter V2.0.
Opération réussie. A chaque décollage c'est l'émerveillement !
Bravo pour les explications sur le site Internet.

J'ai hâte de passer maintenant à un modèle dirigeable.

Merci et à très bientôt
Jean-Marc Gaubert

Hello,Jean Louis  

First of all I have to congratulate you with your superb website (must take a lot of work to keep it up to date).  
One evening while I was surfing the web to see what was new at the UFO sites, I discovered a website where they had built strange looking flying triangles wich one could buy.
Via that website I ended up at your website and couldn't believe my eyes!
So I started off with building the #1 lifter aprox. one month ago.
At first it wouldn't take off because I didn't use the landinggear, I think the power would drain into the wooden table, because it always got very static (rizzla papers sticking to the table and so). So I put some foil and later a thick plastic plank underneath it and then it would jump up.
The next one was a bigger triangle 50X50X50 cm wich took off just as fast as the little one even after I mounted another triangle inside the bigger one.
I also build a flying pyramid but this one was to heavy, 44 grams so it wouldn't move.

I believe that the small amount of wind you are feeling when you are sitting besides a hoovering lifter is just a side effect!
I have a modelhelicopter wich can be flown inside the livingroom and will blow about everything of the table if you fly over.
The lifter won't do this because there is not such an amount of airflow like the helicopter!
So I think there is something else going on!

I wonder what would happen if you would use thin copper sheet material or zincspray for the electrodes, or maybe even a laminate, consistent of layers with bismut-dialectric-titanium-dialectic-zinc or something like that?

I have some pics attached so you are welcome to use them if you wish.

Best regards and keep up the good work!

Chris Jansen
Amsterdam, Holland

Hi JL

It was a cold damp start to December but I still managed to achieve lift off with a small single cell despite the fact I was outside in my unheated garage I live in good old Essex in England.
If John May of Southend reads this please email me jag@gillan.biz. attached is a small video clip of one of the lifts. It didnt stay up for long due to arcing - could I attribute this tho the cold damp air? or is it just my poor construction?? My friends think I'm mad but reading all these other Lifter reports at least I'm not alone. Good luck to everyone - look out for my bigger and better experiments.

Thanks again to Jean Louis and Tim Ventura.
Regards to you all
Alistair Gillan

Bonjour Jean

I like many have been intrigued by your work. I have finally got round to building a lifter and after my third attempt got it to fly. Here in Scotland it is rather damp this time of year, 85% humidity the day of the first flight, my wife opening the dishwasher did not help, but not a spark and very quiet operation. I found, like others, that the thinner the wire the better. I used wire from an old battery operated clock and the power source a 14” colour monitor.

Keep up the good work.
Graeme Mudie
Wormit
Scotland

Cher Monsieur ,

Je vous envoie les photos de notre expérience de Lifter réalisée le 14 octobre 2002 au foyer rural de Chilly le Vignoble.

Cordialement,
Bruno Mordefroid ( Chilly le Vignoble - France )

Hi Jean,

First I would like to thank you for the great site. it is such a good fun to read and of course try it ourself.
at start, we have used 10inch video monitor for power supply for the lifter. although corona was clearly seen but thrust was not strong enough to make it levitate. it did fly after we changed the power supply to 15inch SVGA monitor, we will build power supply next time we test to see.

Cheers,

Takashi Watanabe / co-testers Makoto Morikawa, Kei Tsunashima, Kuniyuki
Kobayashi (we are sound engineers/musicians and video artists.)

Dear Mr. Naudin,                                                                Nov. 21, 2002

I have previously built and successfull flown a lifter V1 but unfortunately, I cannot include it right now because it was destroyed by fire due to arcing.

I used a 40kv 63 watts power supply of a 16" color tv monitor for my lifter V2.  I also added some improvements to the construction of the lifter V2 to make it lighter and faster. The matter is discussed in the diagrams attached in this mail. 

The successful launch of my lifters is fully attributed to your site.

Mark A. Tecson
Manila, Philippines ( marktecson@yahoo.com )

Click here to see the full diagram and an animated video about the improved Tecson's Lifter v2

Hello Mr. Naudin,

I have been folllowing your web sites for several months now, and I am proud to announce that I have completed my first lifter, and am engaged in building a small enough version to fly in a bell jar under vacuum.

Attached are some photos of my small lifter - it has seen a hard life, crashing and breaking several times, but always repairable. Currently powered by an old viewSonic monitor, with and old P2 attached so the green circuit does not kick in.

Now, a little bit about myself. I am a Laboratory Technician at a junior college in Sacramento, California, USA. I work for both the Chemistry and Physics departments, preping labs, acting as quartermaster, and fixing every broken item you can immagine. I love to surf the web in my slow times, and find odd science projects to build that will confound the Professors and instructors. Well, the lifter stumped them all. Most people claimed that it opperates by ion wind, and that definitly contributes, but when my vaccuum flyer is hovering, all bets are off.

I look foreward to sending you more results as I obtain them, but I think that my part in this endevor will be to produce thrust (demonstratable and measureable) in a vaccuum.

Blain Wells
Science Tecnician
American River Colllege

Hi,Jean Louis

I got my lifter to fly !
(My Lifter Data)
weight:3.3g
Type :Triangle 18cm

Thank you for you and your site.
See you.

Name:Yusuke Kudo
Country:Japan

Hi Jean Louis,

My name is John May, writing to you from Southend near London England. I have managed to duplicate several of your lifters and enclose the following picture of my best effort to date a Lifter 2.

Construction :

Plastic drinking straws 200mm long 4mm diameter
Hot melt glue used for frame, paper glue for foil
Overall size 400mm each side
Skirt 30mm deep kitchen foil rounded over on top strut
Wire 0.060mm copper non–coated (teased from braid)
Height above skirt 30mm
Weight of Lifter 13.5grms

Flight Details

PSU 14” colour monitor @20KV (measured with HV probe)
Max height reached 450mm on cotton tethers.
Duration over 4 minutes for some flights.

Thank you for publishing and sharing the lifter data with everyone.

John May

Dear Jean,

    After three failed attempts I finally succeeded in getting a lifter to fly.  I made sure to keep it very light, I think the power supply I'm using (old 14" kdx) has just barely has enough KV to lift it.  The corona wire is only 23 mm above the 40 mm foil skirt.  I'm a 18 year old of Littleton, Colorado, currently enrolled in a physics class at Heritage High School.  Thanks for the great site and all the helpful construction guides, I find your work very interesting and keep up to date with your experiments on your site. 

Keep up the great work!
Andrew Blackstock

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