John Freau's Phase Controller

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Original poster: westland <westland@xxxxxx>

I know the application of John Freau's Phase controller has been 
discussed previously; in particular Terry Fritz conducted some rather 
involved tests, and ultimately was able to attain 70 degrees advance 
with the circuit.
I've not been as successful.  I've been trying the circuit on a .35 A 
Oriental synchronous (reaction) motor with a variety of capacitor 
sizes, though, and at best can only achieve 15 degrees of change.  My 
variac is a small one, with inductance tuning from 0 to 400 nH ... I 
can generally use less than 100 nH before I lose synch on the 
motor.   I've followed John's advice to look for the cap that 
provides around 3-5 volt rise on the motor usage (somewhere around 
3-4 microF) but to no avail. And I've tried cap sizes ranging from 1 
microF to around 50 microF.    Has anyone had a similar experience 
with the circuit ... there don't seem to be too many parameters to 
adjust, and with so many success stories, I wonder if it is not just 
one of the idiosyncrasies of this particular motor.
Chris Westland