Welcome :-)

My name is James Pawson and I am an Electronics Engineer living in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK with my wife Angie and my son Benjamin. My interests are Tesla coils, electronics and computers and I play squash to keep fit. I also play chess, drink real ale, watch birds and enjoy being outdoors.

Tesla Coils

"Inazuma" Mk. 1 DRSSTC
A mid sized Dual Resonant SSTC, currently under construction

"Stubby" SSTC
A Solid State Tesla Coil has been finally completed to a reasonable standard after a few years of on-and-off (mostly off) work.

SSTC Gate Drive Transformer Design Guidelines
This is now more condensed than the original with better organised information. Essential information for designing your GDT.

"Titch" SSTC
Bodged together SSTC powered by a modified AT power supply. Ran fine from a bench supply but the AT supply proved unsuitable for pulsed applications... see why (it excels as a general lab supply though)

A LOPT (flyback) transformer driver
...that varies the output voltage by adjusting the duty cycle of a 555 timer. This is used as a power supply for...

A small Marx generator
built from scrounged parts.

Electronics and Other Projects

How to modify an AT type PC power supply
...to give a variable output of up to 48V DC.

Photos

• Steve Conner's OLTC II at the 2004 Derby Teslathon
• Photos from our visit to Nepal in 2005
• Lindley Clock Tower, Huddersfield taken during its opening as part of the 2007 Heritage Open Days

Tesla Coil Links

• Richie Burnett has possibly the best theory website going - essential reading
• Derek Woodroffe is a prolific TC builder, building big, small, smaller and even smaller coils. There's plenty of inspiration to be had.
• Steve Conner's site also has some very well designed circuits as well as the monster OLTC II - one of the best designed coils I've seen.
• Steve Ward has some great coils and circuits
• Jan Wagner has some good theory, especially on SSTCs
• Dan produces some professional looking coils, and has some design information on his site (scroll down)
• The forums on 4hv.org are a good place to ask questions and bounce ideas of people.
• The Tesla Coil Builders Of the UK (TCBOUK) have regular Teslathons and Gaussfests in Nottingham, Derby, Cambridge and other locations. There is also a mailing list too.
• Mike Harrison's Electric Stuff website has tons of high energy, high voltage and other great stuff.

Electronics Related Links

• Bertrik's Bat Detector Page - I've built his NE612 superheterodyne detector (the one at the bottom of the page) with an Ole Wolff electret microphone and it works a treat although the range isn't great (not the best microphone). I can now sit in my garden and watch the pipistrelle bats flying around. They still haven't found the bat box I put up for them :-|
• Simetrix is a good evaluation SPICE package
• Discover Circuits and ePanorama (bloody popups) both have loads of good links to electronic circuits
• Matthias Weingart has written a very handy parallel port I2C tool
• This is a good page that is positively stuffed with 555 timer circuits. There are also plenty of other good circuits on his site too.

Other Links

• This UK Surname Profiler shows distribution of surnames over the UK.
• Hyperphysics is a great online physics resource
• Live UK Lightning Detector that updates every minute. Very impressive when there are storms moving across the country
• Ultimate Boot CD - very handy for figuring out what is wrong with PCs. Includes Hard disk test and partioning tools, memory test tools and much more.
• Mp3tag is a really good ID3 tag editor for MP3 files - it also has the capability to get album info from freedb. Highly recommended, it saved me an hour or two of renaming files manually.

Site Info

This site was designed using Dreamweaver, a bit of CSS and the odd half hour here and there.

I can be contacted at the following email address

james at pawson dot plus dot com

All of the work on this website (unless stated) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License

Caution: Some of the projects detailed on this website involve working with dangerous voltages. Lethal charge can be retained on capacitors even after turning off power. You should not use the information on this website without understanding the risks involved, which include explosion, fire or injury. Recommend that you read this safety guide on working on mains powered equipment and this guide to Tesla Coil safety. Do not look into power supply with remaining eye!