RE: BIG counterpoise

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

Original poster: "Jeff W. Parisse by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jparisse-at-teslacoil-dot-com>

Jim,

You are right on all counts! We used what was available and it'd
probably work better with 16 radials. We used 8 radials to give the
camera crews pie slices of dry lake bed to move their equipment in and
out and around the coil. The standing gag was that EVERYBODY was
constantly tripping over the radials even though they were weighted down
(sand bags) and we all knew where they were!

An aside: That was one of the most fantastic night of my life. The
entire lake bed was rented by Honda and they had a small army of rifle
totin', night scope watchin' security guys at the entrance to the lake.
You ALL have seen this place anytime you see a car commercial with the
car skidding in slow motion across a lake bed with mountains MILES in
the background... It's almost beyond comprehension how large, flat,
uniform and barren these dry lake beds are. Anyway... The crew was from
Germany and France and they were cooked after three days in the desert
(105 degrees F at 10pm at night) and bolted back to the hotel (40 miles
away) after wrap leaving us to "pack-up whenever we wanted". ... We
didn't want... We were in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE with NOTHING but a Tesla
coil (and the guard's RV about 4 miles away with the guards watching our
backs... No bad guys just millions of dollars worth of Acura's and
camera dollies). We were able to ride our bikes (pedal kind) with our
eyes closed for minutes at a time... Run the coil till the diesel ran
out... Never saw the Milky Way as a three dimensional body until that
night... We didn't get back to the hotel till around 4-5am....

Fun!

Jeff


 > Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz
 > <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>
 >
 > This is an interesting data point, but <joke>I'm sure that
 > Jeff  carefully analyzed all the parameters to make sure that
 > 50 feet was the optimum.  Of course, the parameter in
 > question was the convenience of the fact that chicken wire
 > comes in 50 foot rolls.  </joke>
 >
 > I'll bet it would work just as well with half that... In
 > fact, 16 radials, each 25 feet long, or 32 radials, 12.5 feet
 > long, might actually work better, while using the same amount
 > of wire. For that matter,  8 radials, 12.5 feet long might
 > work just as well.