Re: lake ground?

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

Original poster: "davep by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <davep-at-quik-dot-com>


>Sounds a little scary, but when I was a kid in Los Angeles

>(~100 years ago :-) there was an AM radio station on

>Catalina Island that had wire mesh in the (salt) water for

>their ground.

         Standard procedure for those stations so located.
         Works fine.

>They had a -famously- strong signal.  Might be irrelevant

>though- sea water is presumably orders of magnitude more
>conductive than fresh...
         any water in contact with 'soil' picks up

         more or less 'contaminants' and gets conductive.


>>I will be taking my tesla coil up to a scout camp for

>>7 weeks, and i am wondering what i should do about a

>>ground. I haven't been able to go up there yet to see

>>what the ground is like around the campfire circle. But, i am going to 
>>assume thats its very rocky (like most

>>of the ground in Arkansas). Could i buy some of that

>>metal fence/mesh stuff, strap the bottom of my secondary

>>to that, and throw it out in the lake?

         Should work.
         'strap' should be as short as possible, but if
         'short' (100 feet or less?) likely OK.

>>How good of a ground would this be?

         OK, I'd expect.
         Might get some more mesh and unroll and bond at
         base of coil.

         ('area', sheer, massive area, is a Good Thing in

         'grounds'.)  I'd bring a drivable ground rod or
         two and see if they can be driven.

-- 
         best
         dwp