User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.8.0
On 8/11/17 7:54 AM, Yurtle Turtle via Tesla wrote:
Does a counterpoise work best directly under the coil, or could it be buried 10' feet away, but a HUGE welding cable to connect it?
Best under the coil - you're looking for "E-field management" more than
"return to earth". In fact, if you operated your coil inside a big
cage, that would be best.
The "soil" isn't really supposed to be part of the circuit, so burying a
ground rod 100 meters away in a salt marsh and then running a wire to
your coil is sort of counter productive.
From: Carl Noggle <cn8@xxxxxxx>
To: Yurtle Turtle <yurtle_t@xxxxxxxxx>; Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 10:50 AM
Subject: Re: [TCML] First coil
A long wire or rod buried in a horizontal trench often makes a better
ground than a vertical rod, especially when there is caliche or rocks
that prevent digging deep holes. The good thing about a Tesla coil is
its high impedance, so it can tolerate a high impedance ground. I have
used a screwdriver pushed into the ground, and it worked well. You can
pour some water into a depression around the screwdriver. (Cheesy but
effective)
Safety ground for the power supply should, of course, return to the
service entrance (green wire) and be separate from the secondary low end
ground.