The ionosphere is a region of the atmosphere that overlaps the others (troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere) reaching from 30 miles (48 kilometers) to 250 miles (402 kilometers).

In this region the air becomes ionized (electrified) from the sun's ultraviolet rays. This affects the transmission of reflection and radio waves.

There is only one way to project clear radio signals into space and that is to adjust for the ionized air within our atmosphere. The Ion Pulse Vibrator does just that.

It is located in Puerto Rico and maintained jointly by Canada and The University of Illinois.

A little known fact: In the old days the kids at U of I used to have a patch of Doom (a popular first-person computer game) that contained a weapon called the Ion Pulse Vibrator of Doom. If a player thought he (or she) was losing he (or she could whip out this weapon and electrically charge the game. An unfortunate side effect was the computer actually surging itself and zapping its entire hard drive.

Don't even try to find one now though, because they all have long zapped themselves and the people who played the game won't admit it because they are so embarrassed. I am your last link to this information and you better hit print so you hard copy like in the movies because they don't want the story out now, do they?

...and you thought this was gonna be a dirty sex write up... tsk tsk tsk

I still have mine. It isn't working right now but it sits on the shelf, reminding me of how good I was at the game. I never had to use it. I built a complex filter system around my computer using bicycle wheel spokes, toroidal ferrite donuts, window screens, capacitors, MOVs, diodes, and a Furby. The Furby was next to the ethernet jack in my dorm. I had wired a pickup coil from an old guitar to some wires sticking out of his tail. Several times the charge coming up the line was hot enough to kill the Furby's thin PC board traces but I was able to repair it with my trusty $6 soldering iron and some Wirewrap wires. The buzzing made my hair stand up a bit but my machine didn't die. On long nights the MOVs would get warm to the touch. I guess clamping that much voltage is hard work for a little red varistor.

I had tested this sort of filter setup in the past when I used to run my tesla coils in my apartment. I have yet to lose a computer to nasty rf or high voltage. Soon...

The Ion Pulse Vibrator is broken because my friend Kieth set his megaphone on it. When he stood up, the strap on the megaphone hooked onto it and it ended up across the room. I'll fix it one of these days. Maybe I'll take it burningman next year to keep the drunk frat boys off of the chained down teeter-totter.

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