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Re: Avalon



Hi All,
          what Mark has said below is EXTREMELY sound advice.
I think that the only way you're going to get the design expertise you need
is to pay for it.  It may seem a bit steep to have to pay out £5k or so just
for a feasibilty study, but that looks cheap compared to the thousands of
man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be wasted if you
get the design wrong.  500 people around the world, with varying levels of
experience and little experience of large (+50kVA) coils (no offence Bill,
Greg, Jeff et al) all making armchair suggestions about isolated areas of
the design is not going to result in a quality design.
Greg did not just sit down at his desk and write down some convenient
sounding numbers for the AVLF, he put time, modelling and a LOT of
experience into the design to come up with something fairly likely to work.

ONLY after you actually know what you are building can you start to say what
sort of budget you need and what you need sponsorship for.
Then once you've got a design you can go to a project management firm and
they can build it for you.  Employing all these people to do things for you
sounds expensive, but it'll cost a lot more if you try to do it yourself.

Incidentally, having done a little costing of my own I'd say most of the
estimates thrown around so far are wildly low, based on your posted specs
and aims you're looking at over $½M to do a proper job of it.

Basically quit messing around with the design and concentrate on what you're
good at - raising the cash and generating the publicity;  If you get those
you can let peope who know what they're doing take care of the rest.

Regards
Nick Field


> Hi All
>
> I've been trying hard to ignore this topic, but ....
>
> At 07:05 14/03/2000 -0700, Greg Leyh wrote:
>
> >An interesting project, but not much to comment on so far.
> >
> >The charging circuitry would come much later in the design
> >process, once the primary circuit parameters and the prime
> >power source have been defined.  It seems unusual that the
> >rotary gap would be designed in such detail at this point,
> >when the primary circuit parameters are not known, even to
> >an order of magnitude, it would seem.
> >
> >Overall, it appears that improved sequencing of the design
> >steps could greatly benefit the project at this point.
>
> Being the gentleman he is, Greg has been very polite.  A variety of
> experienced members have raised a never-ending list potential problems
with
> a project of this magnitude and I think it would be fair to say that there
> is a considerable degree of skepticism about the building of a 250 kVA
coil
> by a group who's recent posts were about "Corona" salt-water caps !
>
> The Geek's are in "catch-22".  They want to enlist considerable
sponsorship
> and funding, but to do that they have to have a "project design".  They
> clearly lack the experience and engineering knowledge to even remotely
> contemplate building such a coil, therefore will need to enlist
> professional help (the likes of Greg, Bill, etc.).  Problem is, these
folks
> are as stated - professional, they have heard a hundred "pipe dreams"
> before and are highly unlikely to get involved unless they see a serious
> financial commitment (and a realistic chance of completion) up front.
>
> As Greg states, "not much to comment on so far" .....
>
> IF the Geeks really want to do this (and I would actually love to see them
> succeed - really) then they need to start sounding like a serious concern,
> rather than the "excited bunch of kids" I have this mental picture of at
> the moment.
>
> Before you start designing rotary gaps, try raising the capital to perform
> a "study of feasibility".  This might mean walking into a range of
offices,
> including Greg and/or Bill's, putting a cheque on the table and
approaching
> the topic from the foundation-up, rather than the other way around.
>
> With proven feasibility and committed financial support (in the bank), I
> imagine you would attract some serious interest and there may be a hope.
>
> Cheers
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>