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Re: Why does it work at all
Hi all,
> Original Poster: Steve Roys <sroys-at-umaryland.edu>
>
> On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Tesla List wrote:
>
> > TC's became weird to me again after I witnessed
> > Lou Balint's excellent demonstration of magnifier
> > tuning techniques and node placement. He had a
> > rather clever array of neon bulbs arranged so the
> > observer could see the field intensities in real
> > time, while the drive frequency was altered.
>
> I, for one, would like a more detailed description of this tool. Was it
> simply a bunch of Ne bulbs on a board, or was it more involved? Also,
> what was he driving the magnifier with...a signal generator, or was it
> actually tossing sparks around. This sounds sorta like Bylund's idea of
> making a secondary coil with led's in series along the length, so you can
> see the actual current distribution, but that's obviously an invasive
> procedure and would not let you use the coil as anything other than a
> demo.
It does at least give some insights into the nature of the resonator
when used as a >> 1/4 w.l. transmission line. I submit it is not
greatly useful for gaining insight into operation at the resonant
frequency however.
A few weeks ago, I had a "play" with a multi-thousand turn
resonator hooked as the extra coil to a high frequency system. Since
the extra coil's fundamental was way below that of the driving
system, all sorts of interesting effects appeared including arcs of
corona over a small portion of the winding (clearly indicating the
presence of nodes and antinodes along its length), racing sparks
along a fairly well defined length of the winding etc. Interesting
and fun for a diversion but not much use in making long TC sparks.
Malcolm