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Re: 1st time


Hi Paul,

Lemme see if I can answer some of your questions. My answers are spread
throughout your mail.
 
 Original Poster: "Paul R. Eitson" <xyme2-at-earthlink-dot-net> 
 
Snip

 horticulturist: 
Uuuhh....You are a what ? Okay itīs a question, not an answer.

 1.  What type of discharge is emitted at the top of the coil. Is it
 positive of negative or alternating between the two?

Answ: The discharge from the secondary is a high frequency alternating
current. Small coils can run at 200 to 800 Khz bigger ones run at 60 to 200
KHz. Usually the lower the frequncy the more pronounced the output sparks will
be. I.e. longer, harder hitting.

 2. The secondary is grounded and it is my understanding that "the
 current is at a maximum the voltage is at a minimum while at the top of
 the primary the voltage is at a max. the current is a minimum."   By
 current I assume amperage is at a max. at the secondary ground.  Is this
 current positive or negative at the secondary ground.?

Answ: Not quite. The secondary is grounded and forms a resonant circuit with
Earth.The secondary has an inductance and a capacitance. This is why newer
constructions donīt use the old 1/4 wave eqs. anymore. The 1/4 wave calcs are
simply based on the theory that a TC is just an antenna and the 1/4 wave told
you what wire length to use. However this theory is outdated, because it
didnīt consider inductance and capacitance changes (i.e using different wire
sizes or coil form diameters, etc). The top of the secondary sees a high
voltage and low current (the high voltage is NOT do to step up ratio, but do
to resonance voltage rise alone), while the bottom of your coil has a high RF
current and low voltage. Experiments have shown as much as 10-12 amps of
current at the bottom per KVA of input power. This makes clear why you need a
heavy ground for your TC. This also explains why some coilers use a thicker
wire at the bottom of the coil (high current) and a smaller gauge at the top.
Ideal would be a wire that slowly tapers from bottom to top. But I donīt know
of any wire that would be produced that way, because you would have to special
make it for every specific length (read: very, very expensive custom product.
The tooling for such a wire would be an engeeering feat in itself.

 3. Transformers are used in the coil. What is the incoming 60 cycle AC
 transformed to?
Answ: The 60 Hz are not really transformed. A transformer cannot change the
frequency. Rather a spark gap is used to part time "short circuit" the
secondary of the input transformer. The sparks which jump across the gap,
actually cut up the 50/60 Hz. A spark gap is very rich in harmonics. This
means the resulting frequency of the voltage can be very, very high.

 4. How does a magnifying transmitter work.? More importantly what does
 it do?
Answ: A magnifying transmitter is a very difficult setup to build, because it
works somewhat differently than "our" TC. The real Nikola Tesla "Tesla Coil"
was a magnifying transmitter. In short: a maggy consists of three coils: A
primary closely coupled to a secondary (our TCīs have loosly coupled pri &
sec). The third coil is actually not powered by resonance, but rather via a
transmission line (a wire so to speak) connected to the top of the secondary
and this drives the tertiary coil. It works as a ratio step up transformer.
Perhaps there is another coiler with experience in maggy work that could
explain this better than I do. I still have to build my first maggy.

Hope it helped,
coiler greets from germany,
Reinhard