Re: Wire Losses

To: tesla-at-grendel.objinc-dot-com
Subject: Re: Wire Losses
From: Marcus Young <marcusy-at-ozemail-dot-com.au>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 21:42:55 -0600
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Cc: marcusy-at-ozemail-dot-com.au

Hi Kristian ,

>On Tue, 28 Nov 1995 tesla-at-grendel.objinc-dot-com wrote:
>
>> The lowest resistance conductor you can find is best! Also as short a run
>> of the conductor as possible. I will use an 8 foot earth rod directly 
>> underneath the secondary. The base of L1 will be literally soldered to
>> the earth rod. I reccomend drilling a hole in the garage floor, and
>> hammering that sucker as deep as you can....just where you want it!  :)

CORRECTION! I mean L2 in the above! I wouldnt solder an earth to my
primary in a fit! Of course this, would be ok in a 'non floating'
system where primary and secondary are both referenced to earth.... 

>I wonder how much effect will it have to use stainless steel instead of
>copper on the ground-conductor? My grounding-scheme includes several
>1.5meter long, 30mm diameter, 1mm wall pipes hammered to the soil and
>these pipes interconnected with 14mm diameter stainless-steel pipes and
>from the place of the grounding I'd use the some more of that 14mm pipe
>buried under soil to get a connection to the place where I fire the
>coils.. Does this sound reasonable - I'd guess that the pipe should offer
>great surface for the RF but the resistance will be bigger.. AND: the
>stainless steel will endure without rusting/corroding etc.. Opinions?

Hmmm, base currents can be very high. This could be a problem. Perhaps
someone else can help you there.Sorry. :)
The first earth I made was a 'Tesla style' plate earth. I buried
a plate of Copper about 4 ft deep and covered it in saline left over
from my (never again!) salt water capacitor. I just bolted a strand  
some heavy gauge 3-phase cable and ran that to the coil.  

>Other thing about chokes: I got some really heavy iron-cored chokes
>but _should_ for some reason the filter-chokes be ferrite-cored or
>will these do well? - I'm just wondering if the iron-laminated core will
>"notice" the rf or will the greater inductance just do it's job anyway?

I think Iron-core chokes would cause inductive losses(AC electro-magnets) 
from the supply, as these cores are made with 50-60Hz in mind.
The only chokes Ive heard of builders using, are big air-wound ones
and ferrite ones. Ferrites are compact and have good saturation
charistics at RF and you dont need much wire. :)  

Marcus