7.1Hz, Could Tesla have succeeded?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

"     Unfortunately, Tesla never contemplated using the ionosphere.
Tesla's
power transmission patents were based on upper tropospheric conduction
(8-10 miles) , not the ionosphere (50-100+ miles), the existence of
which
was not even verified until a year after Wardenclyffe was dismantled.
This
is a pleasant little myth that was created by disciples reading later
discoveries back into history where they didn't belong."

	True.  However, he repeatedly states that he proposed using a
"conducting layer which was kept ionized by his transmitter and served
as a CONDUCTING transmission line, with the earth as a return path.  The
consequences of creating that conducting layer at any altitude you might
choose are easy enough to calculate and are completely discouraging.  He
appears to have grossly underestimated the resistance of either
conductor.  When he ran experiments conducting power via an evacuated
tube he apparently had no way of measuring the impedance of the path and
seems to have assumed it was zero.  The presence of millions of neon and
similar signs is evidence to the contrary.

Ed