Re: Terry's New Plane Wave Antenna

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Terry Fritz <vardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi,

At 11:16 AM 12/21/2005, you wrote:

> "The capacitance between the coil and the antenna and the capacitive
> load form a voltage divider. The voltage is directly proportional to
> the coil's secondary voltage."
>
> i think that what you said above is correct only in the vacuum, coz in
> the air there are such things  like "ion cloud", "rectification" and
> maybe other even more funny stuff :-)

One should direct the arcs away from the antenna side of course 
;-)  The arcs toward the antenna would really mess up the antenna to 
top terminal capacitance.

> imo the charge in space between the toroid and antenna depends not
> only from the toroid voltage (or secondary current) - changing of this
> charge in time caused not only by the  toroid voltage changing. so
> even if we assume that the capacitance between the coil and the
> antenna is always constant and totally independent from
> processes/fields in its dielectric/interelectrode space, i think that
> some high amplitude "peaks" that you see on  waveforms are not the
> peaks of the secondary voltage at all.

It would be easy to limit the bandwidth between say 10kHz and 
10MHz.  That would cur out a lot of other "noisy" voltages.

> the most interesting - to see the voltage changing at the start (and
> after) the discharge appears, but the antenna will work in its
> worst way in this case - coz the discharge carries the area  of the
> strong field in its head. even if the discharge is not directed in the
> antenna side - it should  change the field configuration a lot anyway.

One could test for that with just a common metal wire shaped like a 
streamer.  That tends to increase the secondary capacitance buy the 
usual 5 to 8%.  But the system voltage would drop with this load.  I 
suppose one could "calibrate" the antenna with a wire streamer 
simulator too...  One could also slowly increase the coil's power 
looking for odd jumps in the signal that really should not be there.


> imo this antenna can`t be used for any measurements - only for
> observing waveforms, and even then with some restrictions. but
> waveforms of what? indeed not of the secondary voltage itself, but
> summ of it with voltage changes caused by other processes.

It is a question of accuracy.  I think the antenna does really well 
compared to the next best thing, which does not seem to exist ;-))


> ready for the bricks :-)

If you know how to do it better, do it!

Cheers,

        Terry



> -----
> Let the bass kick! =:-D
>
>
> > Original poster: Terry Fritz <vardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> > Hi,
>
> > The files you mention are up to date.  The antenna will work with any
> > scope.  The antenna's ground plane is grounded through the cable to
> > the scope chassis.
>
> > Cheers,
>
> >          Terry