Re: What's a waveform monitor?

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

Original poster: "Scott Hanson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <huil888-at-surfside-dot-net>

Marc -

What you saw was a spectrum analyzer, not a waveform monitor. A spectrum
analyzer displays the frequency and relative amplitude of a specific "slice"
of the radio frequency spectrum. Just connect a short antenna to the input,
and you will see dozens of "peaks" from cell-phone bands, garage-door
openers, portable phones, aircraft radios, etc, etc. I have monitored the
output of a small Tesla coil using a spectrum analyzer, and the result was
that there was so much RF noise spread from a few kHz to over 2 GHz that I
really couldn't "see" much of interest. Unfortunately, the Tesla coil and
the spectrum analyzer were powered from the same AC branch circuit, so much
of the noise may have been conducted into the analyzer via the AC line. I'd
like to try the experiment again using a battery-powered analyzer. Bear in
mind that even on the surplus market spectrum analyzers are much more
expensive than oscilloscopes.

Regards,
Scott Hanson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: What's a waveform monitor?


 > Original poster: "marc metlicka by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <mystuffs-at-orwell-dot-net>
 >
 >
 >
 > Tesla list wrote:
 >  >
 >  > Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
 > <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>
 >  >
 >  > Waveform monitors don't do transforms.. They're basically oscilloscopes
with
 >  > very limited horizontal settings (i.e. 15.75kHz) and funky calibrations
on
 >  > the graticule.
 >  >
 >
 >   The true waveform display that i was privy to see, actually showed a
 > sweep of the peaks generated by each frequency being generated by the
 > tc.
 > with a standard scope you can see peak intensity of the spikes as a
 > slice, but how do you know at which frequency these are at?
 > I admit this is out of my expertise, but the difference astounded me
 > between the two.
 >
 > Also the waveform unit i saw in use would calculate a 3d furrier
 > transform giving a 6x8 plane with these frequencies shown at the
 > position of there magnitude, I was impressed.
 > Marc M.
 >
 >