Re: Introduction

To: "INTERNET:tesla-at-grendel.objinc-dot-com" <tesla-at-grendel.objinc-dot-com>
Subject: Re: Introduction
From: Alan Sharp <100624.504-at-compuserve-dot-com>
Date: 08 Mar 96 19:36:58 EST
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Greetings all,

I have just joined the exodus to this list from the increasingly
bizzarre Tesla list. I'm Alan Sharp, I'm a physic's graduate,
with a long standing interest in electronics. I'm currently a minister
of the Church of Scotland ( the salary's not much.. but the rewards
are out of this world). I'm currently in Corby, England in a town
that's 70% populated by Scottish exiles.

Hobby was computers but that's hit a law of deminissing returns,
more and more powerful hardware, less and less fun - I really
knew that I was fed up with computers when I found myself
playing windows solitaire. My heart sank at the prospects of installing
Windows 95 and then trying to get the system working again.
I came across Tesla coils on a TV program on "free energy" found
the Tesla stuff on the net, got interested. Rekindled my old interest
in electronics - dug out stuff that I haven't looked at in years.
I was greatly encouraged when everyone I tried to explain this to
thought I had finally gone completely mad!

So now I've got a 4" sewage pipe wrapped with copper wire, sitting
in a bucket with a 9 turns of flex wired to a birds nest of electronics.
I've so far sent 5 mosfets and 2 chips to silicon heaven. But thanks
to contributers here I think I am moving towards a more solid design.
I hope sometime to be switching 150v at 500W into either a more
tightly coupled primary, or a bottom feeding transformer.

Today I went to
Anchor surplus supplies in Nottingham. (they've got an
armoured car for sale, and a heavy machine gun - just the
thing for keeping order at congregational meetings). Rumaged
happily in a shed full of junk, no EHT transformers. Some
metal canned 12kv capacitors but I remembered a thread about
this type being no use. Lots of 500uf 350v electrolytics cheap -
bought 20. I found a formula for calculating the ripple voltage
Vripple=7070 x I / C (uk 50hz mains) ie 2v at 3A, I can live with
that.

I'll test each one first - one of my big old electrolytics leaks very
badly after lying used for 20 years! 
Q. I read somewhere about reforming electrolytics, can anyone
fill me in on that?

I'm also keeping an eye out for neon transformers. Neon lights
were never as popular over here as in the US, especially with
town planning authorities. Or possibly microwave transformers
with a view to building a traditional coil later. 

For a brief moment
I considered buying a lot of little transformers say 240v to 5v 3A.
Put 1/2 in // to give 5V high current and feed that into the 5v windings
of the other half but wire their primaries in series to give say 7.5kV at 60ma.
Wonderful idea until I counted up how many transformers I would need!
Back to the drawing board! - I did wonder though if transformer windings
could be used as chokes.

Have fun

Alan Sharp UK.