The AM Forum

Reckon he wired his own a.c. plug to the power cord?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAUPgUcJBOI&feature=endscreen&NR=1

he probably made his own power plug. UK is easy, two rods.

someone on QRZ sells kits: http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?293445-homebrew-HV-butterfly-capacitors

He's in Australia. Not sure if they still use the round prongs there.

The ones in UK changed some decades ago; the safety police apparently went berserk. They now have 3 heavy flat prongs, that look like would be good for about 30 amps. Even small appliances like portable fans and radios use them, but they look more like an electric kitchen range plug. Sometimes the plug is larger and heavier than the appliance itself. You could simultaneously power a couple of Alphas with one of those. Real overkill.

He did a damn good job if he cut those capacitor plates out with tin snips, and then polished each one by hand to a rounded edge, as he claims. I've seen commercially made bread slicers in which the plates didn't line up as precisely as his. He says it is "easy", but I'd bet he put a lot of hours into each one he made.

European 240 and American 240 are two completely different animals, same voltage in the end, but the Europeans use straight 240, ours is more like a pair of 120 lines in push-pull (split phase). Of course, using 60 hz is more efficient than 50hz, but their higher voltage means they have lower line loss and voltage drop. I think its in the UK, on construction sites they run 110v split phase, 55v per line, supposedly for safety reasons.

Australia always used flat prongs - the basic information is here:

http://www.accesscomms.com.au/reference/powerplug.htm

Normal household power outlets are 10A but 15A are commonly used in workshops to run welders etc.

Bob

Somebody told me it is also used on US Naval vessels, for the same reason. That's also what I use in my shack, via an isolation transformer, to run my audio equipment, receiver, vfo and other station peripherals, to reduce hum and ground loops.

A lot of hum and safety problems would be eliminated if the N. American standard were 240v, split phase with grounded neutral, for everything. With the neutral pulling no current under normal conditions, the neutral and safety ground could be one and the same, and all the confusion and nonsense regarding neutral vs ground would not be necessary.

yes, 110 split phase used on naval vessels.

So something that usually runs on 110v single phase can also run on 110v split phase?

Easy for him, maybe.  I agree he did a fine job doing it by hand.  I played around with building a hmbr variable cap a year or 2 ago.  Never could get it to work like I wanted.  Guess I didn't have the patience to do it right.