Rambling On About Ballasts... (fwd)

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: Rambling On About Ballasts... (fwd)
• From: Tesla List <mod1-at-pupman-dot-com>
• Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 22:03:45 -0600 (MDT)
• Approved: mod1-at-pupman-dot-com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 21:15:52 +-100
From: "Gregory R. Hunter" <ghunter-at-enterprise-dot-net>
To: 'Tesla List' <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Subject: Rambling On About Ballasts...

While I serve the last few months of my endless tour here in Sleepy Hollow, UK, I've got plenty of time to daydream about what I'm going to do with my gift from Eastern Electricity--a 240V/11KV 5KVA distribution transformer.

As soon as I return to the land of "Home Depot", I want to assemble some sort of ballast for my excellent British pole pig.  I thought I wanted to build a straight-core type choke, such as a 3" PVC pipe stuffed with welding rods and wound with 150 turns of #10.  I was thinking of gluing the core together to form a sliding plug, giving me a variable inductor.

After reading the mail lately on inductive ballasts, I'm not so sure any more.  At least one subscriber feels that a gapped "C"-shaped core is far superior.  I'd like to be able to idle my pig down to as little a couple 100VA, and up as high as 8KVA.  Is my straight-core variable choke idea a hopeless cause?  My goal is to get sparking fairly quickly, so I don't want to spend a year re-inventing the ballast.  If anyone has experience with this type of ballast design, I could sure use some education/inspiration.

Cheers,

Greg

Beck Row, UK

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