Re: Robert Golka doing well and still doing science.

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

Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-twfpowerelectronics-dot-com>

Hi All,

Mike has sent in many interesting files to:

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/mike2004/

I have not seen them all yet, but thought I would pass this along ASAP!!!

Cheers,

         Terry


At 10:23 PM 9/25/2004, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>                 My name is Mike and I've been working with Bob Golka a 
> number of years now.
>I am in his lab as I write this, we had a high speed cable web connection 
>pulled in because, as you know, the web is a great research tool.
>I ended up at this site because I was given the task of scanning into the 
>computer many of the pictures he has in a photo album. In with the album 
>was a printout of some comments of his work at Wendover and the large coil 
>there from this message group, going back some time.
>In prior web searches of his name, I've hit this site before but with so 
>many hits, I had only paused, looked and kept going for the actual item I 
>was seeking at the time.
>Reading the messages, I came back here, got added to the list, read some 
>threads and saw some interesting work still goes on
>As he is not as patient with computers as I am, I often end up doing the 
>computer projects and this has included doing digital metering for the 
>voltage, current, vacuum (where needed) and other electrical data, with 
>one computer interfaced digital meter per function and one dedicated 
>computer per each to record the data. Of course this includes another and 
>faster machine for the digital movies that back up the VCR tapes. Slower 
>and older machines serve nicely the metering jobs.
>Right now Bob is out in the mid-west on some field research for a couple 
>of weeks, so I got the picture scanning job and reminded of the messages I 
>read.
>Yes, there were some interesting adaptations he used in the Wendover 
>project for materials to make that large coil with but when you are in 
>such a remote area, you make do with what is available, such as the 
>(laughed at) use of porcelain no longer used toilets as stand-offs for the 
>primary. As there was so much rebar in the hangar floor, he used what he 
>could to help that situation. The point is, he used what he could, pretty 
>or not and it worked.
>It has also been said that he's left more than a few people less than 
>pleased when he does not mince words and yes, I've been there, had that, too.
>Still, he's put the time in, what, four decades and counting with a whole 
>lot of work. In the search for Ball Lightning, as many of you know, there 
>was a lot of coiling, high voltage and lower voltage high current work.
>Here on the East Coast, I've worked with him on some smaller coils that 
>did only maybe 30 foot discharges, nothing quite on the Wendover scale; I 
>think he got ~81 feet with that critter.
>Some years back, as I work in high power induction heaters ~600 kW output 
>and lower, it was decided to try something a little different.
>We needed some high voltage at high power for an experiment but also 
>wanted a clean wave form, not chopped up with hash and we wanted a fairly 
>consistent output.
>The larger coil and spark gap that existed nearby was too much for the 
>project so we elected to make a smaller coil, skip the spark gap, use a 
>set of large balls in his collection for the top of the coil and drove it 
>with an induction heater Bob had got his hands on.
>The machine was equipped with a MHz oscillator RF section, so I rebuilt it 
>with a conventional 450 kHz section instead, of which all the parts were 
>available from my work place. We traded the Mc parts for the Kc parts as 
>an even trade.
>An extra tank cap was added to the induction heater to get the frequency 
>lower and as it is the nature of induction heaters to have high currents 
>in the work coil and RF tank, we setup a one turn primary of water cooled 
>3/8 inch tubing. We knew the area which the Tesla coil was going to 
>resonate in for each different size ball.
>In this test, we were using a Lepel tube type 2.5 kW machine, modified. 
>These machines are a free running oscillator with a grid feedback coil 
>inserted inside the tank coil. The outside work or output coil is 
>electrically the lower end of the internal tank coil.
>So, what rings in the tank coil is inductively coupled to the grid or 
>feedback coil and where the tank rings is where the oscillator will run, 
>tracking tank inductance changes.
>The next step was to modify the grid coil so it took the signal feedback 
>from the Tesla coil and locked onto that, as long as the frequency range 
>was within the value of the induction tank and main coil.
>Because we wished to have variable power, it was handy that the induction 
>heater had a built in SCR controller that controlled the primary power to 
>the plate transformer, had an instrument input so an external rectified DC 
>signal could be used to keep the driving power at any constant level we 
>wished. It of course had the standard pot for manual control from zero to 
>full power.
>As most induction heater builders are not concerned with line frequency 
>hum, they are not usually well filtered on the plate supply, unless the 
>job calls for it (pipe welding at fast speeds will have a ripple visible 
>in the welds, like a phonograph record, so those are filtered well).
>We noted that the line frequency hum could be heard in the discharge so we 
>added a 25 hy filter choke rated at 1.6 amps, several large filter caps to 
>the tube plate supply and that was fixed.
>The resulting discharge was pure RF, no noise, no sputter, really clean 
>and the nicest discharge I've seen compared to a standard driven coil. The 
>thing ran in the ~280 kHz range. It was nice to not have to worry about 
>Gap adjustments and we were able to control the power very well in that 
>experiment.
>In other work ongoing, we have been using a large glow discharge tube, 2 
>feet wide, 6 feet tall (Bob is known to do things on a larger scale).
>For that, we made a DC power supply 2600 volts at 10 amps, very well 
>filtered. Current control range is 400 microamps through 10 amps continuos 
>and is rated at 100 percent duty cycle. We have been doing sprite support 
>research, charting what power makes what light spectra at what light 
>levels. At 6 feet spacing, the tube goes out from the glow mode to the 
>dark mode so we did not need control under 400 microamps. So we use glow 
>mode and arc modes. Here is a link for those not aware of atmospheric 
>sprites work that we are supporting.
><http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~cpbl/press/williamsNov2001/>http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~cpbl/press/williamsNov2001/
>We are still working on the ball Lightning issue in various projects. Part 
>of the pictures I have to scan in are those from Bob's dual railroad 
>diesel locomotive one megawatt discharges and they are most interesting. 
>Once digitized from the originals, at some point he plans to have them up 
>on a web site or at least digitally saved.
>Also, in the discharge area, we have stills (screen shots) and digital 
>movies of 3 large roundish striations (basket ball sized) and of that or 
>greater spacing inside the discharge tube that maintain position for ~3 
>minutes and the frame by frame study of that formation. Not Ball 
>Lightning, they do show some very interesting plasma formations and were 
>mainly round. Those I could email, as the web site FTP upload area 
>reported being full on this site, because I tried to send a few.
>So, I thought I would report Bob is still hard at work, has expanded his 
>research area to match current technologies. Tesla coils not abandoned, he 
>has stored the largest gap chamber, one made for NASA, the chamber ends 
>are each 900 pounds of copper and water cooled, so are the inside gap 
>electrodes, rated at a constant several megawatts. They were used to make 
>a atmosphere plasma discharge with the power supply being hundreds of 
>submarine batteries (16,000 amps discharge each at 7000 amp hour rating). 
>That system used a high pressure blast of air across the gap to make a 
>high power plasma which tested various thermal tiles at really high 
>temperatures and air speeds.
>So, he has this huge gap, just in case he needs to use it. Thing weighs a 
>ton, really.
>Regards,
>                 Mike
>
>