Rob said:

>I'm sorry I missed some of this discussion but I was wondering how he
>proved t held a charge?  How did he charge it (voltage level, type of
>instrument, lenght of time...etc)?  How did he show it held a charge
>(voltmeter)?  How did he discharge it (short, resistor leak path)?
>Where was the cable during the test (rolled, laid out..etc)?  Did he show
>the cable was at close to no voltage after discharge?
>
>I have heard of antenna wires showing charges, but this was because of
>the natural EMF of the background.
>
>Just curious.
>
I too am curious about the the specs on this cable. As a reference, a small
camera flash stores about 5 joules of energy. That's enough to make some
decent sparks, and more than enough to be dangerous. The formula for
capacitive energy storage is [C*V^2]/2. As an earlier poster mentioned,
RG-58 is approx 30pf/ft. When you do the math, you'd have to charge about
666 ft to about 1KV (probably wouldn't handle that) or 66666 ft to 100V to
get 5 joules. That's 11 miles of cable. Or maybe this cable is something
really exotic... always possible, given the eclectic nature of PicLister
backgrounds.

Reg Neale