Re: Micro coil earthing

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Scott Fulks by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <darkthing-at-earthlink-dot-net>

> I'm not sure where the
> idea came from that high frequency isn't felt, my coil has pretty high
> frequency for a TC and the sparks can be felt quite well.

(Obligatory Safety Message) It's a very bad idea to ever get yourself into a
position where you are able to feel a shock from any electrical apparatus.

Virtually all of the coils discussed on this list have both a high frequency
component (the resonant frequency of the primary and secondary, responsible
for the "resonant rise" effect), and a low frequency component (the BPS of
the spark gap).  A standard 120 bangs-per-second coil has a very strong 120
Hz waveform envelope which feels just as nasty as the current from the wall
socket.  The fact that each low-frequency "bang" is composed of a bunch of
high frequency oscillations doesn't matter much to your nerves.

This low frequency stuff is very hard to filter out.  As far as I know, the
only way to get a pure high frequency output from a coil is to drive it from
a good tube or semiconductor RF source without a spark gap.  Even such a
high frequency output can give serious burns.

Regards,
Scott Fulks (darkthing-at-earthlink-dot-net)