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Re: Corums New Tesla Coil Theory Paper



Hi all,
           I have a few observations of my own to add to those already 
made on the Corum's paper.

      While great play has been made on the subject of the role that 
VSWR plays in coil operation, nothing has been said in this paper 
(unless I've missed it) that Q is related to VSWR by multiplication 
with a constant (4/PI).  This has been stated by them in other 
papers.  There is a clear inference that if a coil has a high VSWR, it 
also has a high Q, Q being an excellent description of the losses 
present and easily quantifiable by bandwidth measurements.

       Nothing has been said about the voltage that can be reached in 
a lossless helix of specific parameters *when fed by a specific 
amount of energy* as it is in each and every cap discharge coil. I
think a clear distinction should be made between the characteristics 
of a coil fed from a CW source and a fixed energy source. IMHO, 
anyone tempted to think that a coil rings up and up with successive 
cap discharges should get an oscilloscope onto it and see what 
actually happens in a running coil for themselves.  It is also 
instructive to use a cap discharge circuit capable of sub-
microsecond dwell and break time adjustment to get a feel for just 
how difficult it would be to achieve that kind of result with a 
mechanical gap of any sort, especially when voltages, ions present 
etc. dictate the actual spark timing.

     I wonder about the appropriateness of modelling the secondary 
as a *uniform* tx line. I don't think there is disagreement that the it is 
made up of distributed elements and that current for small toploads 
is non-uniform.  I can't for a second buy the notion that secondary 
current is uniform during gap dwell. I can construct a primary which 
would make that situation impossible (unless the speed of light is 
infinite of course ;)

Regards,
Malcolm