1/4 wave theory

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

Original poster: "McQuay, Michael by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Michael.McQuay-at-wcg-dot-com>


>From what I've gleaned from the list so far, I fear I may be about to start
a holy war, but I'm going to ask anyway.

Is it advantageous to design a coil such that the linear feet of wire in the
secondary is equal to 1/4 of the operating wavelength?

There, I've pulled the pin.  Let the shrapnel land where it may.

Here's my situation.  I have a secondary that I wound a number of years ago
that I would like to put into service.  I've never ran this secondary since
I wound it.  I'd like to build a tank circuit to excite this thing, so I'm
wondering if I should use the 1/4 wavelength theory to determine the
operating frequency of my tank circuit or if there's some other method I
should use for determining my operating frequency.

Specs:

Coil length - 23.625 inches
Coil diameter - 8.375 inches
number of turns - 536
wound with #22 magnet wire
spaced such that there are about 22.5 turns per inch
linear feet of wire - 1174.6 ft.

>From everything I'm seeing on this maillist (and associated websites), it
looks to me like I may not be able to get very good performance out of this
coil without rewinding it with more turns.  Comments?

Michael McQuay