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Electrum 130 KW Report




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From:  Bill Wysock [SMTP:wysock-at-ttr-dot-com]
Sent:  Sunday, March 22, 1998 12:49 PM
To:  tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject:  Electrum 130 KW Report


To All,  March 20, 1998.

Friday night, I managed to find my way to building 302, at Hunter's
Point, in San Fransisco.  What follows is a report to the Tesla List,
of my experiences and observations.  I know many on the List wished 
that they could have been there, but couldn't.  It is to those folks,
that I write this report.  Please forgive the (first person) narative 
in my sentence structure.  I just got home this afternoon, after a 
whirlwind trip from L.A. to San Fransisco, then on to San Rafael,
then Novato, then Cambria, (close to the Hearst Castle, on the 
central California coast,) and  this afternoon, finally back to L.A.

Friday night.  Time: 7:30 p.m.  I'm traveling south on 3rd Street,
looking for Evans Ave. (where I'm supposed to turn left.)  I am
driving a 1988 standard bed Toyota pick-up truck.  I have had my
windshield smeared with hundreds of bugs, and there's no fluid in
the windshield washer bottle in the engine compartment, and to 
make matters worse, there isn't a gas station anywhere in the San
Francisco Bay area, that has a squeegie or paper towels, to clean
ones' windshield.  So visability is extremely limited, especially 
since the street signs are not lit (and they are always on the 
"other" side of the street!)  Anyway, I found my way, thanks
mostly to Greg Leyh's excellent E-mail instructions.  When I
arrived at the Guard Gate of the Navel Shipyard, I said that I 
wished to go to Building 302, to visit Greg Leyh."  The guard
produced a form for me to sign, asked to see my dirver's 
license, proof of insurance, and current vehicle registration.
When I had first pulled up to the gate, no one was behind me.  
When I looked into the rear view mirror, after I had finished
filling out the form, and handed it back to the guard, there must
have been at least a dozen vehicles stacked up behind me!  The
guard said "Follow the red cones to the site."  I did.  And as I
approched buidling 302, there was a host of Navel Police 
vehicles, with their amber overhead flashing lights, and guards
with flash lights, directing me to park.  The time was now about
7:40 P.M. PST.  I got out of my truck, and immediately, someone
parked next to me and introduced himself.  (Tesla coil people are
a "specail" group and usually very friendly.)

I proceeded to make my way to this giant Icon, silloetted against
the darkness of the San Francisco night sky.  It was unmistakeable:
it WAS "Electrum!"  I paused and thought, only a few years ago,
without the aid of E-mail as popular as it is today, and without
the proliferation of web sites, with so much information, this
event would have had to be "advertised" or "promoted" through
the more (conventional) or "classic" means of communications.  But
hey, this is the late 1990's and we have this wonderful List, to 
share our thoughts an exchange ideas.  Well, thanks to Greg Leyh's
hard work in this regard, as the evening wore on, I'm certain that 
more then 175 people showed up, for the Friday night exhibition!

When Greg felt the audiance has assembled, he made a humble
speech to the crowd.  There were many "movers and shakers" 
in his audiance.  Among them, Eric Orr, the Artist, who conceived
the design of Electrum, along with Greg Leyh.   Mr "Reasonance"
himself, D.C. Cox; (the years have done good by you, D.C., from
what I saw and heard from you that night!), and a host of others,
including T.V. video crews, and God knows who else!  It was the
veritable (San Francisco version) of a genuine "Teslathon!"  
(Apologies to R. Hull for using the term!)  The audiance was full
of anticipation, as everyone had their turn asking lots of questions
to Greg, and viewing the "guts" of Electrum, from inside the
10 foot cubed "out-house," that houses all of Electrum's power
supply, Rotary gap, oscillation capacitors, 3-phase 37.5 Kva
transformers (three) current limiting reactors, 3-phase diode stacks
smoothing reactor and filter choke, crow-bar switches, current
sampling transformers, etc.  

I hope Greg will post images to the List, of his design and 
engineering techniques (as well as his contruction of Electrum.)
If I may say so, he has really done a great deal of design work, and
has really done his homework, in exicuting this magnificent piece
of machinery.  The rotary gap is nothing short of "awsome!"  One
who is knowledgabel in mechanical desing, can see the tell-tale
marks of inginuity, resorcefullness, and modifications to the
original design, to overcome "Murphy's Law" type problems.
The interior of Electrum is simple, yet at the same time, elegant
and functional.  No bells and whistles here; just solid engineering
design and excellence of exicution in construction.

Outside, off at a distance of about 50 feet, is a small black 
anodized "podium" which is THE master control surface, to
tame Electrum.  There are safety interlock key switches, full
metering and other instrumentation, and also a battery powered
spectrum analyser!  There is also an on-board small B & W 
T.V. monitor, built into the control panel.  3 ammeters each have
a scale of 0-300 amps!  There is one large meter, for measuring
Electum's 30 horse power rotary spark gap r.p.m.'s and this
dial ranges from 0-4,000 r.p.m.!  Note: when Greg spins the
motor up to its highest speed, you can almost feel the ground
"vibrate" as even with all the work in dynamically balancing
of this, (the world's largest rotary spark gap,) one can "feel" and
certainly hear, the roar of this mechanical Viathin come to "life."

There are two "T-handel" lever controls on the control surface at the
podium: one controls the speed of the roatry gap, the other raises
the input power to Electrum and also "fires" the coil.  Kind of 
similar, to the speed and control levers on a drag race boat, of a
top fuel dragster!  The control surface of the pedestal-mounted
podium is all machined and black anodized, complete with a 
mini high intensity light on a flexable goose neck, to illuminate
the control surface.

Greg pushes a aircraft military-type toggle switch cover open, and
flicks a switch.  A loud "clackston" bell draws everyone's attention
(which it is designed to do,) and one can see the audiance carefully
step back further, and further......
The whine of the rotary gap builds speed, the viewers are tense,
Greg controls the podium intruments like a veritable "Meastro,"
and all at once, the sound of the drone of the rotary gap is
instantly replaced by the unmistakable din of a high power
Tesla Coil going off.  Hugh arcs wind sinuously, all around
the top of the coil, crawing like serpants, away from the outline
of the stainless steel spherical structure, that is the "top-load"
capacitance, for Electrum.  Some arcs seem to come alive, and
as Greg reduces the speed of the rotary gap, some of these
serpant-like arcs wind their way downward, following the night 
time light breese, that is blowing across the Bay area.  One of the 
arcs attaches itself to a light standard, some 20 feet away from
the coil.  Others snake around and attach themselves, near the
base of the unit.

The audiance is spell-bound!  I AM SPELLBOUND!  Electrum
is magnificent!  I hope somehow, some video of this exhibition, will
be available, to those on the List who wish to see anamation of
this system.  As a matter of fact, with the local T.V. news people
there, when I left, and drove up to San Rafeal later that night, here
was footage of Electrum, on KRON's (NBC affiliate in San 
Francisco) 11 p.m. news!  No interview, but excellent footage
of the arcs snaking around the top of Electrum's 7 foot diameter
sphere.  On Saturday night, when I stayed at Cambria, I watched
the 10 p.m. version of the KTLA-CH.5 news from L.A., and
again, the coverage of Electrum was as seen the night before in
the Bay area.  Great coverage Greg!

To Greg, and all the gang at LOD:  I applaud your engineering,
design and construction; you have a masterpiece in "Electrum,"
the world's largest classical design (One primary/secondary
winding,) coil in the world!  The best of luck to you, as you
make ready for shipping this machine to its new home.  And
thank you, for the time you spent talking with me, and for the
invitation.  (I still wonder what those commercial jet pilots
leaving SFO International Airport, must have been thinking,
as they looked down into the darkness, only to see something
that must have looked like Hell opening up!)

Respectfully submitted,
Bill Wysock.


 
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Tesla Technology Research