Well I finally found my roundtoit and finished up my four pole monopole replication (as seen on this page, about 1/5 of the way down ). I'm still trying to figure out how to tune this beastie, especially in light of the recent info I got from Peter Lindemann in the pendulum thread (wow, was that an eye opener!). I've also figured that I need to get a new PSU since the one I have now can only supply 300 mA (!), but that's another story.

At any rate, I can get the thing into resonance with a 2.2K base resistance on all four circuits with a very low current draw (around 1/4A!) but the charging goes to hell (and with Peter's revelation I guess that makes sense). Taking the base resistance down to 330 ohms results in fairly good charging, but the current draw goes up to 1.09A. Also of note is that with the 2.2K base resistance, it's having some slight self-oscillations but the stronger magnets seem to be able to overcome them as it spins up to around 900 RPM.

I know now that I'll get better results with a n-filar coil (where n>2) and separate branch circuits, but I just had to build this thing after seeing it on the EFTV2 film. That and the phrase, 'charge the hell out of this battery.' Of course, I'm not getting anywhere near the same results as he did, but that could be due any number of reasons such as lousy bearings, sloppy rotor, different wire, different transistors, the fact that his is really an 8 pole monopole, etc.

Right now I'm feeling a bit discouraged. I feel like I'm going around in circles, not really getting anywhere and unable to find any good answers to the questions that I have. Meditating on the original SG has brought no insight. I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall.