David,
I think Radio 4 on 198 kHz is straight through analogue - no digital
buffering with its inherent delays. Yesterday afternoon (1200 UTC I think),
I listened to the BBC pips from Droitwich at the same time as the pips from
RWM on 9,996 kHz, and I watched the second-hand of my Steiger
That sounds like a recipe for excitement - DC current into seawater
should generate hydrogen on one and and oxygen on the other electrode.
At 3000 amps, rather a lot of it.
I imagine they keep the current density low enough that the gas is
absorbed into the water as it's evolved. But
mean a second wire ? Surely you do not mean they are using the earth
(dirt) as a
return path ? That would be terribly inefficient !
Down here in Australia, Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) is common for long
rural lines. They run at 12.7 kv (one phase of a 22 kv 3 phase line). At the
On 6/24/2011 9:20 PM, Will Matney wrote:
However, I should have
said, one should never run a 60 Hz transformer, or motor, on the same line
voltage it was rated for at a lower 50 Hz.
Most modern commodity transformers for electronic power supplies are
specified for rated performance from 47 to
Oz,
Some companies in the US are producing 50 hz transformers in their mass
produced units so they can readily sell them to the European market and
here. That is a plus for us, if we buy one, as they will run a lot cooler,
and last longer over it, when we apply 60 Hz to one. There's a bit more of
Did it sound like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 7:14 PM, WB6BNQ wb6...@cox.net wrote:
Will,
OK, that sounds normal to me. Originally, your first description made it
seem as
something completely different.
I see nothing wrong with
As some of us know, a company called Lightsquared used political
connections and campaign contributions to short circuit established
FCC procedures to obtain a band of frequencies for the cell phone
system they are developing. Thanks to their political manipulations
they were able to avoid
Hmmm. The Single Wire Earth Return scheme seems like a great cause for the
stray voltage that affects farmers:
http://articles.ky3.com/2011-03-18/stray-voltage_29143748
From: Eric Garner garn...@gmail.com
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency
Well, I guess my response to your invitation to comment won't be any worse
than pip time. I live in a rural area where this so-called stray
voltage was a problem for years. I guess no real electrician ever said
anything because everyone was certain that a solution to such an obvious
That made me laugh, as unsightly and farm seems to go well together (no
matter how you keep it cleaned up)! Wonder what he would have done, if
after he pulled the grounds, that he found a prized horse dead from
electrocution?
One thing about here in the US, well at least now, and after having the
Mark,
Transients, etc, might cause some hiccups, as I thought about this too.
Plus, there's not much one can do about them, unless you look at what
happened via a waveform, at the time.
Best,
Will
*** REPLY SEPARATOR ***
On 6/27/2011 at 9:43 AM Mark Spencer wrote:
I once
I tried the procedure given in the manual to initialize an
Odetics GPStar. After a while it thought it was in Oz
because the satellites it was looking for were in that
region, not here.
So I cycled the power and put into SR mode. It eventually
sorted things out and appears to be cheerfully
For any interested in the link for the Wikibooks article on transformer
design, the link is below.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Electronics/Transformer_Design
Best,
Will
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In message 4e086d33.6040...@ozindfw.net, Oz-in-DFW writes:
On 6/24/2011 9:20 PM, Will Matney wrote:
However, I should have
said, one should never run a 60 Hz transformer, or motor, on the same line
voltage it was rated for at a lower 50 Hz.
Most modern commodity transformers for electronic
A good article, IMO.
-John
For any interested in the link for the Wikibooks article on transformer
design, the link is below.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Electronics/Transformer_Design
Best,
Will
___
time-nuts mailing
John,
Thanks. I started that article back in 2006, originally at Wikipedia,
writing at least 80% of it, and actually added the portion on RF and
impedance transformers last year, if I recall. It got too big for
Wikipedias liking, and they moved it to Wikibooks. I noticed somebody added
a good
I do not want to minimize the threat posed to GPS by Lightsquared
(LS), but the post below (i) ignores the last 3 months of debate on
the subject and dozens of messages on this list, (ii) mis-states the
case against LightSquared, and (iii) ignores the FCC's leading role
in the fiasco.
LS did
Poul-Henning,
Running the transformer that way won't burn it up at that instant, it just
causes it to run hotter, because it's closer to saturation, and it shortens
the life span a good bit. A lot of the new ones now being made, are wound
to run on either frequency (wound for just under 50 Hz),
The only thing I know of, apart from clocks, that you should not run
on the wrong frequency are oldfashioned mechanical shavers.
There are lots of consumer products sold in North America that
specify 60 Hz only, and in which the transformers will hum and
overheat if run on 50 Hz. I have
They were talking about a very small drift here. Even if the change were ten
HOURS in a year, that's one part in 876.
I highly doubt your shaver is going to be affected by grid tolerance.
I wouldn't plug a 60 hz model into 50 hz, but that's different.
If anybody is really interested in transformer design, they should look at
the classics, like:
Fitzgerald Kingsley
or
Magnetic Circuits and Transformers by MIT Staff
They go through magnetic design, from soup to nuts.
Also, the MIT Rad Lab Books Components volume.
The units for design have
Ah but transformer design will become a lost art and will spawn lots of
little garage industies :-))
I have certainly had some Heath transformers overheat and go shorted-turn
primary when used on 50Hz in the UK, and also some Japanese ones...they
have 50Hz and 60Hz I believe unless they have
Running the transformer that way won't burn it up at that instant, it just
causes it to run hotter, because it's closer to saturation, and it shortens
the life span a good bit.
I have yet to hear of any evidence for that being a problem with
US kit here in Denmark, probably because most kit is
You can reduce (or increase) the line voltage with a small filament
transformer connected to buck (or boost) the line. For things up to a
couple of hundred Watts, the cost is $10.
-John
Ah but transformer design will become a lost art and will spawn lots of
little garage
John,
I have the MIT books, and they are good. I think I listed, Magnetic
Circuits and Transformers, in the references at the bottom of the article.
As a matter of fact, I used a BH curve chart in that book, I believe, to
calculate the relative permeability of all the alloys I listed, at the flux
Hi Will:
I got interested in RF coils and spent a couple of years winding coils,
and measuring them on a Boonton Q meter. That led to Tesla and I got a
number of his publications. It turns out that a Tesla coil is not
magical, it's just an RF transformer where the primary and secondary are
There is also a good chapter on this in Radiotron Designer's
Handbook, Fourth Edition, P. Langford Smith, 1953, 1,498 pages which
has an expired copy write so it is available legally for free here.
http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/RDH4.pdf
This covers audio transformers and also secondary effects
Hi:
For small (say under 5 Watt) loads the old wall wart has bit the dust
(at least in California) because they waste power. The new wall warts
don't use mains frequency transformers, but rather transformers running
is kHz frequencies. You can tell because they are much smaller than the
At 20:48 27/06/2011, you wrote:
... What makes it worse is our nominal is 240V AC not 220
Alan G3NYK
Alan,
the UK mains voltage should be 230 V +/- 10% after the European
normalization done several years ago. Our in Italy went from a
nominal 220 to 230 V at the same time.
In any case,
Locally, there was a radio station running PSAs to tell people to unplug their
cell phone chargers To save the environment.
I was very tempted to call in with some envelope calculations on the energy
expended to send out the PSAs vs the energy saved.
It's not easy being green, but it's easy
I just got the below ad in an e-mail from Symmetricom:
Order any SyncServer® NTP network time server and get 25% off a Domain
Time II Starter Kit includes the comprehensive synchronization software
suite for Windows.
Best,
Will
___
time-nuts
One of the big networks ran a program on being green a couple of years
ago and suggested that the energy crisis could be solved by unplugging
iPod chargers.
Nuts.
-John
===
Locally, there was a radio station running PSAs to tell people to unplug
their cell phone chargers To
Brooke,
I have several units made by ESI that I use for this, and one is the big
3-piece rack unit that contains the bridge, and the two suppies with the
detectors, one a mirror galvenometer. I also have one of their 4-1/2 digit
LCR meters for the bench, and three smaller units, two digital, and
On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 12:34:41PM -0700, Tom Van Baak wrote:
We are more a group of experimenters than lamenters, so
here's an open invitation to all of you in the US to join me
on a 60 Hz measurement party, starting as soon as you
can and lasting as many weeks or months that it takes to
get
In message 29c8a27967ae5343be5ad7a887c9bd1a1881268...@esi-sbs08.esi.lan, Davi
d VanHorn writes:
Locally, there was a radio station running PSAs to tell people to
unplug their cell phone chargers To save the environment.
The ironical thing is that what really needs to be unplugged are the
Disagree.
What really needs to be unplugged are the damn polticians that meddle in
and mandate insanities about things they are clueless about, based on who
makes the biggest campaign contributions.
YMMV,
-John
In message
On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 12:18 PM, J. Forster j...@quik.com wrote:
One of the big networks ran a program on being green a couple of years
ago and suggested that the energy crisis could be solved by unplugging
iPod chargers.
In the US Standby Power is about 5% of total. But standby includes
I'm sure their software used to be free.
Rob K
-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Will Matney
Sent: 27 June 2011 8:19 PM
To: time-nuts@febo.com
Subject: [time-nuts] Symmetricom SyncServer
I just got the below ad in an
Rob,
That's what I thought.
Best,
Will
*** REPLY SEPARATOR ***
On 6/27/2011 at 9:17 PM Rob Kimberley wrote:
I'm sure their software used to be free.
Rob K
-Original Message-
From: time-nuts-boun...@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Will
You should use a lithium at 3.6 volts there is a switching diode that drops
.6 v so it sort of does matter. Essentially because at 3.6-.6 you are in the
sweet spot of the battery life. At least the way the odetics thinks about
it.
3 volts - .6 is 2.4 v and thats close to the 2.3 v considered to be
At the risk of incurring John's wrath ..:-))
The trouble with the so-called green switch-mode transformers is they
pollute !! .the radio spectrum!! We still have LF BC services in
Europe and an LF amateur band.The noise floor has risen by nearly 20dB in
the past 10 years, due to
Well...
It is possible to design these things so that they are quiet. I have put many
designs through FCC and CE certifications, with emissions so low that they are
asking me Is that thing on? :)Two layer boards, no expensive shielding
or suppression. It takes careful design of the
Will Bill,
Our (commercial) three phase power is fed by only two high-voltage wires
(7,200v I think) which each pole has a pair of
transformers. I can only assume one generates the 220v single phase lines and
the other is the high-leg delta. Around here 230v
three phase delta seems to be more
Jason,
I've read some about the new meters, but AEP hasn't touched any of
ours...yet. They have demand monitoring here too, and you are correct, it
can really rack up a power bill. A good friend that owns a machine shop
watches his all the time. Once you get three phase power, the costs
Without meaning to sound sassy, Brooke, let me assure you that there is
nothing just about it. While in high school I built quite a large Tesla
coil with a 16kv, 60ma neon transformer, a pressurized air-quenched spark
gap, a huge variac, and a bank of 50 .15mfd (I think they were .15mfd--that
was
It wasn't Analog Devices, like I thought, but Teridian Semi, and division
of Maxim, who makes the chips. The part number in question was a 71M6511.
The app note is 4889.pdf from Maxim.
Best,
Will
*** REPLY SEPARATOR ***
On 6/27/2011 at 5:03 PM Will Matney wrote:
Jason,
I've
Bill,
Now, if you could have connected a key to that, and a long wire antenna,
you would have been in business! One gigantic spark gap transmitter.
Best,
Will
*** REPLY SEPARATOR ***
On 6/27/2011 at 5:36 PM William H. Fite wrote:
Without meaning to sound sassy, Brooke, let
Hi Bill:
Agreed. But there are those that consider them magic.
Have Fun,
Brooke Clarke
http://www.PRC68.com
William H. Fite wrote:
Without meaning to sound sassy, Brooke, let me assure you that there is
nothing just about it. While in high school I built quite a large Tesla
coil with a
On 06/27/2011 10:38 PM, Jason Rabel wrote:
Centerpoint Energy has reached the epitome of laziness and is converting
everyone over to smart meters so people can better
monitor their usage... In reality it does nothing more than offer real-time
monitoring for the power company, and they no
IMO, smart meters are a greased, very slippery, slope toward power
rationing or fines for overconsumption
YMMV,
-John
Will Bill,
[snip]
Centerpoint Energy has reached the epitome of laziness and is converting
everyone over to smart meters so people can better
monitor
Hi John:
Yes.
In S. California there was a big investigation about their accuracy. It
turned out that they are better than the mechanical meters, BUT if time
of day metering is implemented along with the smart meter you power bill
can up by hundreds of percent.
Have Fun,
Brooke Clarke
John,
Well, of course, that's so the fat cats, who are at the top at the
utilitites, and the stock holders, make more bucks without having to
upgrade the grid to do it. That's a prime example of Capitalism at work.
How was the old saying, they would squeeze a nickel until the buffalo
s##ts.
I bet they'll drop estimating your bill too!
Best,
Will
*** REPLY SEPARATOR ***
On 6/27/2011 at 2:54 PM Brooke Clarke wrote:
Hi John:
Yes.
In S. California there was a big investigation about their accuracy. It
turned out that they are better than the mechanical meters,
At the risk of incurring John's wrath ..:-))
Not at all. I'm interested in HF too. And, I've spent months trying to
quiet switchers on spacecraft.
What I do have a lot of wrath for is lame-brained ecco-activists who are
totally ignorant of the principles of physics, chemistry, and EE and
Sadly no. You need a good impedance match from transmitter to antenna.
A Tesla coil has a very high output Z.
-John
Bill,
Now, if you could have connected a key to that, and a long wire antenna,
you would have been in business! One gigantic spark gap transmitter.
Best,
Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Sadly, much of the population have zero understanding of technology or
science. Hence, everything is magic.
-John
===
Hi Bill:
Agreed. But there are those that consider them magic.
Have Fun,
Brooke
I knew I should have added the leyden jars and the coil!
I just saw an old Central Scientific induction coil with spark gap auction
off on ebay a while back, and this made me think of it.
Best,
Will
*** REPLY SEPARATOR ***
On 6/27/2011 at 3:11 PM J. Forster wrote:
Sadly no.
YThere are limits to corporate greed, as well as market feedback
mechanisms. Such constraints do npot apply to governments.
Suppose electricity went to $5/KWH:
If it were done by a utility, people would buy generators.
If it were legislated by government, generators could be outlawed.
YMMV,
I picked up an older stereo amp to use its parts for a project.
With no load at all, the power transformer runs uncomfortably hot.
At 50 Hz it might make a good space heater for a while.
--
Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX N2469R c...@omen.com www.omen.com
Developer of Industrial ZMODEM(Tm) for
I know the older style meters currently in use usually slow down over time (a
minuscule amount, but still I guess it adds up).
I do not know if the talk about demand meters and timing were about current
meters or the new smart meters...
I've seen some new meters (I'm assuming the smart ones)
Jason,
What will be funny is when all the neighbourhood hoodlums start stealing
all the antenna modules off the poles, or an enterprising teen electronics
whiz kid starts jamming the signal. I can see antenna modules piling up at
scrap yards, sitting beside the aluminum pop cans, as I speak.
My
On 6/27/2011 6:33 PM, Will Matney wrote:
snip
I'll leave a parting shot at AEP on this. When I closed up the building I
had the shop in, I went down to our AEP office at the time, and paid off my
bill, the day after I had them to put a boot on the meter, and a new seal
on it. It was read that
I really don't understand the 'over consumption' issue when it comes to
utilities. The production of electricity, in part, is related to load.
However, the cost of the generating plant, personnel involved in running the
operation, maintenance, etc., in other words, fixed costs, are the
The problem comes down to the lack of good storage to level the load.
With big thermal (coal or nuke) plants the mechanical power applied to the
generators has to equal the electrical power delivered to the load
(ignoring losses). If more power is put in than goes out the generator
speeds up and
On 6/27/11 9:43 AM, Mark Spencer wrote:
I'm not sure if the results I am seeing are valid or not.My signal source
is a 16 volt doorbell transformer that feeds a voltage divider which in turn
feeds my 5370B with an approx 2 volt sine wave. Setting the trigger point on
the 5370B to 0 volts
In message 2292.12.6.201.196.1309211348.squir...@popaccts.quikus.com, J. For
ster writes:
IMO, smart meters are a greased, very slippery, slope toward power
rationing or fines for overconsumption
Or, if they make your electricity bill go down: An fair attempt to make
the consumers pay the
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