Re: OLTC Thoughts

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

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

In a message dated 8/11/02 8:55:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes:


>
> > ...
> > Richard Hull's H2
> > thyratron magnifier, by necessity, quenched at the first zero crossing of
> > the wave form.  So only the positive half of the energy cycle was passed to
> > the primary.  While a very interesting design, it is not a spectacular
> > performer, if one measures performance by spark length.  It's a phenomenal
> > research device though.  
>
> This is quite strange. A Tesla coil, or a magnifier, can't operate
> correctly without at least two polarity reversals in the primary
> current.
> If the current is interrupted after the first half-cycle, only a small
> fraction of the primary energy is transferred to the secondary.
> Where is this magnifier described?
>
> Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz




Antonio, 

It's likely that an incomplete amount of energy was transfered in
Richard's thyratron TC, as you suggest.  This probably severely
limited the performance.  There's an article about
it in a TCBA issue, but he doesn't discuss the power transfer
issue, I don't think.  Some have speculated that the driver
coupling was only about k = 0.3 or less, which would require
a number of cycles to fully transfer the energy of course.
Richard was planning to do further work using back-to-back
thyratrons, or a parallel diode to pass the reverse current,
but he moved on to other projects.

Cheers,
John