Re: Secondary Q variation experiment is going!!

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

Way cool... Now what you need is a humidity sensor in your test facility...
The Radio Shack weather station is a bit pricey.. However, there are some
humidity sensors by themselves that might be amenable to DMM interface...
Or, a fan, and a wet bulb/dry bulb setup with a water supply.....

What's the form for the secondary? Sonotube? PVC pipe?  Is there some way to
measure the actual temperature of the secondary (to see if it is below
dewpoint?).. (Perhaps resistance of the windings?)

The resistance of the secondary will change significantly with temperature..
does that correlate with observed Q at all?



----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 6:54 PM
Subject: Secondary Q variation experiment is going!!


> Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>
>
> Hi All,
>
> Paul and I have been real busy getting the Q variation experiment going.
> Happily, it is now finally working and reporting very interesting
results!!
>  It is really VERY complex so I will go over what it all is about...
>
> We are studying what effect 'weather' has on the "Q" of secondary coils.
> By putting high voltage 'step function' into a secondary coil, we "ping"
> the coil such that it resonates.  We then do the FFT of the resonation to
> find all kinds of parameters.  I am doing the physical experiment stuff
and
> Paul is doing the UNIX computer and high-powered math stuff.  Paul can
> remotely work on the software on the computers here and just "make" it all
> work :-))  It's cool having Paul fix the software on my computers
overnight
> so it's ready to go when I wake up ;-))
>
> So here it goes.  I have a secondary (my "big" coil sitting in the loft
out
> in the garage basically exposed to outdoor temperature and humidity (a
> "drafty" garage to say the least)):
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-08/P4080009.jpg
>
> The coil is "pinged" every five minutes at 10Hz for 10 seconds by the
> "pinger" that puts a series of 2500 volt step functions into the coil:
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-06/P4060003.jpg
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-06/P4060004.jpg
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-06/P4060005.jpg
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/tssp/3-30/TCMApinger001.jpg
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/tssp/3-30/TCMApinger002.jpg
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/tssp/3-30/TCMApinger003.jpg
>
> The pinger uses a cool resonant drive but I am not sure it could power a
> "real" Tesla coil...
>
> The base current from the pinged coil is detected by a Pearson 4100 1:1
> current monitor and the signal is feed back to the TEK 3012 scope through
a
> long 50 ohm terminated cable.  The scope averages 64 pings from the 10
> second burst:
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-08/P4080008.jpg
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-08/P4080006.jpg
>
> The old laptop running Metratek software:
>
> http://www.metratek-dot-com/products.html
>
> Far far better the "Dilbert committee" TEK software!!!) takes the data
> every 10 minutes over a serial link from the scope and stores it to a
> shared account "bob" on hot-streamer-dot-com via internal Ethernet as CSV
files
> of each waveform's data.  It is all fairly well automatically updated in
> real time:
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/bob/qvar/data/expt0/
>
> This data is then picked up every hour by my Sun Blade100 UNIX computer
via
> local FTP for analysis by Paul's software:
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/tssp/3-30/sun.jpg
>
> It also pulls data off a very nearby 110+ year old weather station at the
> CSU campus across the street from me and figures out all the "details".
>
> http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/wx_form.pl
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-08/P4080010.jpg
>
> http://www.abelian.demon.co.uk/tssp/tcma/
>
> The 64 bit Sun computer with 640Meg of RAM (ok, maybe that's overkill
:-)))
> crunches that data and stuff with Paul's programs and store the results to
> a nice web page at:
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/bob/qvar/results/expt0/index.html
>
> For you "results oriented" folks, the above page is the "important" one
> ;-))  It shows that the Q dropped wildly when it rained.  The frequency of
> the harmonics took a dive tonight as it dried up here.  Only in Colorado
do
> you see the humidity drop from 100% to 10% in six hours :-))  We may have
> missed the snow here since the prairie dogs have lost their woolly
> coats....  But spring has "interesting" weather too...  All of Paul's
> programs do the data collection and crunching stuff.  He is obviously real
> good at this ;-))
>
> http://www.abelian.demon.co.uk/tssp/
>
> We "think" that water falling on the near roof is affecting the coil's Q
> greatly:
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/Paul/4-08/P4080011.jpg
>
> It seemed that once rain fell on the roof the coil's Q instantly dropped
> like 80%!!  I was going to hose down the roof tonight to check but the
> humidity is real low so a bad time to go messing with things...
>
> All this is pretty young and raw but Paul and I thought we had better
> report "something".  It's not like we have been sleeping recently ;-))
> Paul is like 8 hours ahead of me so the time zones do not match well, but
> one of us is usually 'sort of' awake :-))
>
> Lots more experimenting to be done to track down what is affecting what...
> It's all very young and new so not at all sure what the "great meaning" is
> but data is pouring in.  Great fun!!!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Terry
>
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