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Is My Revalation Accurate? (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 12:53:52 -0400
From: John Heck <jkh-at-lexis-nexis-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Is My Revalation Accurate?
Hello,
Since I am a newbie to coiling I've been lurking, generally, and reading up. As I was getting into
my first book on coiling theory the other night, I realized that what was being described as a
Tesla Coil was actually a spark gap transmitter of teens/twenties ham radio fame. If you were to
key the coil and hook the secondary up to a long wire antenna(using a transmatch would help)
you would be all set up for a night of fun, and highly illegal(since 1931, I think) hamming! Pretty
much any receiver(no matter what frequency it was tuned into ;^) would be OK, as long as you had
the volume turned up really high! On a good night, you could hope to DX the guy across the county
from you, and maybe even a few miles further. All the neighbors, in each direction for about 2 blocks,
would know that you're "on the air", as the racket from your spark gap would fill(foul?) the summer
nights air about as full as it could get, and a great, luminous glow would burst forth from your
garage/attic/basement(wherever) window. Spark gap transmitter artifacts from that era still show up
now and then, even the huge primary iron that so faithfully cranked out the 10,000 to 15,000 volts
needed to penetrate the "aether". Dang! This is starting top look like more fun than I thought! Am
I wrong about this or what? I've got scads of old literature describing the homebrewing of spark
gap transmitters!