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Re: concrete grounding
Tesla List wrote:
>
<even greater Snip>
I can suggest two possibilities
> for why the spark missed the pipe. 1) the concrete is a bigger target, and
> the sparks and charged fields may not "see" the small pipe. 2) (and maybe
> more likely), TC sparks develop their length by the "growing" principle.
> Bylund had done some work with this using his solid state coil, and he found
> that certain conditions favor the production of sparks that do not "go for
> ground", but instead have a mind of their own, so to speak. I think it was
> his conjecture that it's very different than a DC spark, in the sense that
> the voltage is much lower for the distance jumped than would be expected when
> compared with DC spark jumping distances.
>
> When the spark is first formed, it is short and cannot reach the pipe or
> ground or anything, therefore its direction of propagation is random. From
> the tip of the spark, the spark then grows longer from the continuing power
> input to the system, but again, the added amount of spark is weak, too weak
> to reach any target, again its direction is random. This random growing
> continues until the spark IS long enough to reach something, but what it
> reaches is random due to the gradual, incremental increase in the spark
> length.
> Comments welcomed.
>
> Looking forward to full power results!
>
> John Freau
--
There is a third possibility; one which relates to lightning rods. The
purpose of a lightning rod is not to attract lightning to ground, but to
bleed off charge so that no lightning strike will result(like an ion
gun). It is just possible that the resistance of the concrete in the
driveway at the resonant frequency of the TC was lower than the total Z
of the grounding pipe. This would seem to indicate that the operator
should use a ground path that is geared more toward radio frequency (ie
large outside geometry, like roof flashing).
Rick Holland
The Answer is 42