Re: How with no RF ground?

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: How with no RF ground?
From: Malcolm Watts <MALCOLM-at-directorate.wnp.ac.nz>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 17:09:01 +1200

Hi Bob,
        You wrote....

> My house is old and all plugs are just 2 prong with no
> 3rd plug for ground. When I remodeled my bathroom
> I hammered a ground rod out back and ran a ground
> cable into a newly placed 3 prong fixture in my
> bathroom. Recently in testing my TC before I
> dismantled it for final construction, I was getting
> 14" sparks from a 9kv-at-30ma transformer. I ran
> an extension cord/box from my bathroom and was
> using the 3rd prong of my extension box as my RF
> ground connection to my coil. Yesterday I took the
> plate off the wall in my bathroom to look at the
> wiring when I noticed that the ground cable had 
> broke away from the wall socket long ago. So in
> my testing, I actually never had an RF ground
> at all! I do not understand how I could have
> gotten the output I did without this ground.

I've done it too at low power. I think the ungrounded wiring is 
acting like a counterpoise (capacitive coupling to earth). But
perhaps someone else could set me straight on this. I wouldn't
attempt this at higher power. Sooner or later the wiring will break 
out. You could end up with a fire.

Malcolm