David FORBES
Magnetic Resonance Amplifier Tests (Disproof)
14 Nov 1995
To: keelynet@ix.netcom.com
From: David Forbes
Subject: MRA
I found the Magnetic Resonance Amplifier to be an amusing if not wholly effective Free Energy device. I showed the articles to my co-workers one at a time, and the first thing each of them said was, 'You can't measure AC power with a Fluke meter!'
I built Greg Hodowanec's Mini-MRA circuit (described in Jul-Aug-Sep '95 Extraordinary Science magazine) and found that it works at about 50%
efficiency if the input current is measured with an oscilloscope. Then I saw that his measured input current was much lower than mine. I found that he used a Fluke 87 DMM to measure the input current but not the output current. He calculated output current from the load resistor, so his output current value was more or less correct.
I then called Fluke to ask about the frequency response of the AC current function of the model 87, and they said it's only accurate up to 2 KiloHertz. He was using it at 75 KHz! No wonder he measured such an efficient circuit... he was badly misusing the test equipment. And he was measunring in such a way that the bad reading increased the apparent efficiency.
The reason I built this circuit is that it is a textbook circuit that exists in millions of consumer electronic items with <100% efficiency. So I knew it
was a bogus Free Energy device before I built it. I just built it to demonstrate to myself that I understood the author's error. Just in case you haven't realized this yet:
The file you got from Joel McClain about the Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical 'verification' is NOT a verification of over-unity operation of his MRA. It is simply a duplication of McClain's erroneous efficiency measurement. Note the wording of the following statements by TRA:
4) The input current was then calculated PER THE CUSTOMER as the voltage (rms) across R1 & R2 divided by the resistance of R1 + R2.
6) The output current through R3 was calculated PER THE CUSTOMER as the voltage (rms) across R3 divided by the resistance of R3.
7) The CUSTOMER DEFINES the MRA gain as the output voltage (rms) D to E times the output current through R3 divided by the input voltage (rms) A to B times the input current through R1 & R2.
The people at TRA did *not* analyze the circuit or the measurement techniques. They simply used McClain's techniques, as they stated above. That doesn't prove that the circuit works. It only serves to lend false authority to a flawed measurement --- one that was shown to be erroneous by both Puthoff and Frode.
So please change your MRA score to: 2 against, 1 irrelevant.
One thing to keep in mind about the MRA. The underlying principle of the whole thing as stated by Norm Wooten is that it taps the energy locked in a permanent magnet and an piezoelectric crystal. (I don't have the source handy, but he says this in his Extraordinary Science article of Jul-Aug-Sep '95.)
I don't know if you're familiar with the operation of a peizoelectric crystal, but it doesn't have any energy locked in it. It just has the ability to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. That is, if you put in electrical power, you get out mechanical power, or vice-versa. Nothing magic in that. An electromagnet does the same thing. And they have both been shown to do this with less than 100% efficiency by thousands of researchers over the years.