[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

T.C. Phone Home

Hello all,

While I was in the test room this afternoon pounding the walls and 
ceiling grounded strike meshing with 7- 8 foot streamers from my medium 
size coil now smoothly processing power at 4.6KVA, my telephone 
answering machine recorded a most unusual call.

After concluding my tests and upon my return to the office in another 
part of the building  I discovered that the call received light was lit on my 
answering machine.  Rewinding and playing back the tape revealed  a 
most unusual message.  The first part of the recording was normal as 
though a caller had phoned, and held on the line choosing not to 
speak.  Then, instead of my answering machine timing out after 20 
seconds and automatically hanging-up it stayed off hook (divine 
intervention?), until the telco automatic voice came on for a spell 
advising, to paraphrase...'Hang up, hang up, a continued off-hook 
condition at my end would not be further tolerated and that continued 
misappropriation of precious milliamps of telco line current at 48 volts under 
such circumstances would soon,  no doub't,  be considered a federal
criminal offence!'.  After many wasted minutes I guess their machine 
finally realized that its threats were ineffectual as it was merely 
talking to another of its own ilk, and so it finally ceased its stern 
demanding message, and replaced it with a higher average power 
consumption beep tone.  My answering machine continued to record this
noise until its tape ran out.

So what?, you must be saying to yourself if you're still reading 
this.  Well, what it is is that the whole time during this recording, 
in the background I can hear ZZZZZZZZZZT.......ZZZZT.....ZZZZZZZT...,
in 400Hz whine whenever my T.C. contacted a ground target with a good 
hot streamer.  Apparently artificially lifting  ground here with some 
artificial lightning induced  noise currents in my phone lines.

The burning question is therefore; Did my Tesla coil initiate the 
recorded call? (Hmmm).  Did someone by chance call while I was 
running my tests and not leave a message, but in doing so perhaps 
triggered my answering machine to the point that line RFI could keep 
it off-hook far beyond its normal time- out period?  Did line 
transients upset the logic cicuit in the answering machine and cause 
it to stay off hook, or even answer the line when not called?  OR, did Nikola 
Tesla call? Naw, he would have left a message, right?  It MUST have 
been Elvis, and He didn't leave a message cause He had the wrong 
number!

Say, you know, this opens up new potential commercial applications 
for T.C's.  I could start a T.C. 1-900 phone service.  Whenever a 
hard core coiler phoned they would hear that sweet, sexy, 
intoxicating...ZZZZZZZZT,  that some of us are willing to pay a lot 
of money to hear!

Happy coiling!, rwstephens