[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Input impedance
Terry:
Thanks for putting my paper on your web site. I don't have a home page to
publish such stuff. Maybe one of these years!
Some people on the list know me and others do not, so I should introduce
myself. I have three degrees in EE and taught at Kansas State University for
28 years before taking early retirement 5 years ago. I have been convinced
since high school days that our understanding of antennas and propagation is
flawed. It seems that society has done susprisingly well with electronics,
given the poor foundations. But, if we really understood what is going on,
just think of how much further we could go. I believe that the next century
will see as many 'new' things as this century has (like airplanes,
computers, electricity to every home, etc.) However, someone has to be
looking for the new stuff.
I had been thinking about these concepts for years but was unable to spend
enough time on them while teaching. Early retirement gave me enough money
for rice and beans, with an occasional chicken, so I can think strange
thoughts all day long! It looked to me that one area that had not been
fully explored was Tesla coils, involving high voltages, high currents, and
frequencies in the 50-500 kHz range, so I study Tesla coils. Some old
geezers golf or fish, but I picked something much more flustrating! I
bought 25 acres in the country and erected an 'Ag storage building', in
which I store my IH 656 tractor (and consider Tesla coils). My renter farms
for a hobby, so the place does not look like a mad scientist operates there.
There are many unanswered questions about input impedance. You notice that
the paper just ended, without a conclusion. As I have some more thoughts on
the subject, I will write another paper (Input Impedance, Part II). It is
quite possible that the one coil I measured is some sort of freak. I am
looking at other coils now, to see if there are any patterns.
You asked about my current transformer. The Tesla coil current flows
through the center of a ferrite toroid on which 15 turns of wire are wound.
This secondary current flows through a twisted pair cable with the two wires
soldered together at the far end. The current probe is clamped around one
of these wires. A current of 3 A in the Tesla coil yields a nominal current
of 3/15 A to be measured by my probe, well within its current limit.
The paper was written with an old ASCII editor (kedit) with the correct
commands to make LaTex prepare the beautiful mathematical equations. It is
my understanding that Word does not yield the same quality of equations with
the same effort.
Gary Johnson