From: "Terry Fritz"
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2000 23:16:02 -0700
Subject: Re: [TSSP] pn2511 is baloney
Hi Paul, You will be happy to know I have finally started to really scrutinize your paper (pn2551 0.1a). Sorry it took so long but been busy ;-)) My thought below are just thoughts as I dig through it so don't take them as gospel. Just my thoughts... 1. I notice that tesla is not capitalized. I usually refer to Tesla coils with a capital "T". I am not sure what the engish (English) rules are on such things but it seems like Tesla should be capitalized since it is a person's name. I'll yield to the english majors on how that should be... 2. One page 2 for Cground your refer to a perfectly conducting plane with self inductance ignored. Perhaps you should explain that a radial counterpoise is assumed just to be clear if that is what you meant. The assumption seems like sort of a major one without much explanation. Marco's coil on its metal floor is an example of where you (we) can get into trouble here. 3. I guess I am a little uneasy about referring to the earth's (Earth's) capacitance as being several hundred uF (bottom page 2). That assumes it is a conductor and not an artificial dielectric. Some places state that the earth's capacitance is 710uF but there are some arguments there that the number has no meaning for a big ball of dirt... Since the only Cinfinity path is virtually straight up, Getting into the earth's capacitance subject may be asking for trouble. Cg can be a solid ground reference rather than a capacitance. If Cg did "float" a bit, we would never know it. 4. In the center of page four you add the toroid and give the added C's for a complete description of the electric field coupling of the coil. Perhaps another diagram (like at the top of page 2) showing it all would be appropriate here. 5. I really like at the bottom of page 8 where you show the equations you derive are equivalent to a transmission line if the dimensions are adjusted. This helps to bring those (me) that get a little lost in the preceding math back to earth. The equations preceding look good as far as "I" can tell. 6. There is a large white space before section five but that is a trivial edit. 7. Just a note that the conclusions of section 5 do match real measurements well. 8. In section 6.5, you may want to show another graph like in 6.4 but for a "typical" 3:1 h/d coil configuration. Something we can refer to that will be close to real. 9. In section 7, maybe you should underline or arrow or otherwise denote the defined equations from the sub equations used in the derivation. In other words, make it obvious which equation is the final and important one. 10. In section 8 you regard the top load as only a capacitance and thus its effects. However, there is debate about how a toroid may effect the coil as a shorted turn. The shorted turn effect of a top toroid does not seem to be significant (perhaps due to its poor conductivity), but the data here is poorly understood. Would any of this shed light on this subject and would it affect section 8's assumption that the top load is just a capacitance and not a shorted turn too. So that's what I saw in two hours of reading it here in bed with the laptop computer. I hope this is of help. Cheers and Merry Christmas!, Terry
Maintainer Paul Nicholson, paul@abelian.demon.co.uk.