Re: TC question

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Hollmike-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 07/28/2001 9:13:14 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes: 


>
> If you can then what would happen if you made another primary and secondary 
> that are resonant at the first 
> coils Freq  and used this as your driver for the second set of coils? 



I am not sure you'd get the results you wish.  According to past threads from 
the N. California Teslathon,  it seems to be the opinion that the coils are 
capacitively coupled through their toploads.  On the other hand, I have run 
my largest coil with my second largest in proximity and sitting on a metal 
filing cabinet.  Even though the coils are quite different in operating 
frequency, I noticed one day, that 1-2 inch sparks were jumping from the 
ground connection of the idle coil to the cabinet, so maybe this could work.   
 The idle coil was not connected to anything- just sitting there. 
  I would use a coil with a topload as the driver(if I am reading you right, 
this would be opposite to what you envision) and keep the output low enough, 
by narrowing the spark gap, to not have breakout.  You could probably see 
some decent sparks jump the spark gap of the receiver coil.   I saw one 
response saying it would be difficult to have a cap that could take such a 
high voltage, but that would not be impossible- especially if the cap is 
connected across the receiver coil.  I have more than 20 transmitter caps 
that are rated at 30kV each, I could easily string them in series by cutting 
1/2 inch or so lengths of all-thread and achieve a sufficiently high voltage 
rating. 
   I certainly cannot say for sure, but it might be better to ground one end 
of the receiver coil.   It would not take much to test whether this would 
improve the reception or not.  You might even experiment with grounding both 
the primary and secondary of the receiver coil.  I read somewhere once that a 
guy made a crystal radio with an obscenely large coil.  It was said that he 
could drive a large speaker with this coil - with NO power amp.  The coil 
simply developed enough energy to drive the speaker by itself.  This seems to 
indicate that what you are thinking WILL work.   
   Now, if you get great sparks jumping the spark gap of the receiver coil, 
you would probably do well to hook up some kind of load in place of the gap 
and see what happens.  Of course light bulbs would be the best first choice 
in this case since motors probably can't run off the high frequency(it'd 
really be cool to see a bulb explode from a high surge current :o) ).  One 
could rectify the output and get a DC motor to run, I suppose though.    
  Well, there's my two cents.  If I get a penny for my thoughts, I wonder 
what would become of the leftover penny. 
Mike