How to Test the Effectiveness of Different Homemade Faraday Cages
I feel we covered the theory of EMP in the last article, so now I want to link to some videos of the Homemade Faraday Cages experiments I have done trying to find the best system for protection of my personal equipment.
Like I said in the previous article, you hear a lot of internet commando ideas on Faraday cages, but you rarely see anyone actually test the cages they talk about. I did not build a EMP generator for obvious reasons, so I had to find a reasonable alternative.
For the tests I used a cell phone and a FMRS/GMRS handle talkie. Cellphones operate in the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz ranges at about .75 to 1 watt, a FRS/GMRS is around the 463 Mhz range at about 5 watts.
Neither of these are within the test ranges of the 1962 HEMP tests of 1 KHz to 100 MHz but they are within the range of later tests that show EMP ranges from 200 MHz – 5GHz and may be as high as 30-billion watts (depending on type, and distance from source).
I am not trying to protect my cellphone. In a post EMP area, a cell phone would be useless (unless you have steel wool). If my cage cannot shield against cell phone transmission, then it is worthless against the much higher EMP.
I am NOT trying to protect the phone. I am seeing if the cage can block the signal TO the phone
Please view the videos below to see some of the cage designs I tested. Personally I don’t rely on any of them, and just keep a few redundant items in them to make life easier.
I feel that in the event of a man made EMP attack, the few things I can store won’t balance with use verses cost, so I spend my resources on items to work around electrical dependence.
Besides the FEMA guidance I mentioned in the earlier article, you may want to visit this document: http://ids.nic.in/jces/ART-3.htm
