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Re: bi-polar (center-fed) TC



Ralph:

	In your post you mentioned your calculations of the inductance and of
the coupling constant.  
	Here at Texas Tech, several professors and post-doc's were trying to
create a mathmatical model of a tesla coil's behavior, to use as a
starting ground for a math model of another, similar pulsed power
project.  Anyway, one thing that everyone quickly realised was that the
classical, physics II formulas for calculating solenoid inductances don't
work well for inductors operating at high frequencies.  It seems that
inductance is frequency dependent, too.  
	I haven't done a great deal of investigation of any of the wheeler
equations, to see how they measure up, so I can't speak for them. 
Furthermore, I don't know how programs like WinTesla do their
calculations, and I have never used any of them, so I can't say anything
about them either.
	At any rate, most of the highly mathmatical professors and post-docs and
engineers here at Tech did not like the idea of trial and error tuning,
because it wasn't "sophisticated" enough for them.  They all tried to
calculate the inductance using formulas mentioned above, and NONE of the
numerous Ph.D's in physics and electrical engineering, who worked on our
tesla coil, ever got it to work.  
	The only person here that could ever get the coil to resonate was a lab
technician self taught amateur scientist with only and eighth grade
education, (kind of reminds me of Maxwell).  This technician knew very
little math, needless to say, and was not distracted by all the fancy
stuff, and wasn't afraid to tune by trial and error.
	On this list you may find people who rely heavily on theoretical
calculations, and I imagine this post will stir up some dirty looks and
comments from those who do, but I can tell you that I have personally
observed that equations, as sophisticated and complicated as they may be,
do not always produce useful results, especially with tesla coils.  
	If you do use equations and fancy math stuff, I know that you must be
very careful to use them right, as they can be quite deceptive and
misleading sometimes.


						Brent
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