Shop Notes – Building a new Tesla Coil for upcoming telluric experiments.


In prep for the upcoming through-the-ground communications experiments this month, I spent the last couple days fabricating a large Tesla Coil secondary out of UHMW polyethylene.

Target frequency is just above the 160m HAM radio band, so about 2-2.4mc

Using RG316 coax cable since it is silver coated and has a quite large surface area. Only the outer sheath is being used in this instance.

Machining the strips, cutting the wire grooves and mounting grooves
Finished vertical risers
Winding the coil
Finished

I intentionally left it oversize to allow lots of room for trimming to hit the target frequency. It’s better to be 10 feet too long than one inch too short.