Proper sheathing of the HV power lines/ was: How many STSG's in service?

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

In a message dated 11/24/01 10:29:30 PM Central Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes: 


>
> Hi Barton 
>
> I really like the way you take power from the pole pig through plastic 
> plumbing pipes. It keep the lethal cables from just lying around. I'm ging 
> to use this approach myself. Thanks. 
>
> Godfrey Loudner 


Godfrey, Bart, all, 

Yes, this is definitely a good idea to protect the HV lines and 
the operator during Tesla coil operation. Another way that I 
came up with is taking standard insulated #10 or #12 stand- 
ed bldg. wire and running it through some 1/2" ID vinyl tubing 
w/ 1/8" walls (you can purchase this at your local
hardware                                          store). Then, I took the
vinyl sheathed wire and ran 
it through some 1" dia. flexible aluminum Romex conduit. 
The Romex conduit is RF grounded. This umbilical connect- 
ion from my control panel to the coil assembly is about 16 ft 
long. The thing that I particularlly like about this setup is that 
the streamers cannot hit the HV power line since it is com- 
pletely Faraday shielded by the grounded sheath. I'm running 
a 10 kVA, 14400 volt pole pig as the power supply and the 
vinyl insulation has never failed yet. I know this setup does 
add parasitic capacitances to the input power line that may be 
undesired, but I have never had any problems with it and it is 
a nice flexible, non-rigid power supply line. 

BTW, I also encased the standard 120 volt supply line for the 
RSG motor in an RF grounded flexible Romex conduit, so I have 
two Romex conduits leading from my control panel to the coil as- 
sembly. 

Sparkin' in Memphis, 
David Rieben