1979/1980 Mother Earth News Hybrid plans?

 

Does anyone out there have the Mother Earth News Hybrid Electric
plans?
I'm looking for the details of David Arthurs' "pulser" made from a
heater motor and a starter motor?
Apparently a rather crude PWM controller with no electronics???

 

nospam.clare.nce@sny.der.on.ca wrote:

I believe it was a spinning disc with metal contacts.
Something like how a distributor works. You place
contacts around the outer edge some degrees apart
and you switch them in one at a time, in sequence.

For instance, a copper clad circuit board cut into a
circle with only 1/4 of the outside circumference left
with copper. Place 4 contacts each 90 degrees apart
wired in parallel. With only one switched on you will
get a pulse 1/4 of every revolution. With two you'll
get 2/4 of every revolution, three gives 3/4 and four
gives you full power.

The accelerator was connected so that it would activate
switches for the contacts in sequence.

Plans for this are still available from Mother Earth News.
http://www.motherearthshopping.com/Mother-Earth-Shopping-Detail.aspx?ItemNumber 64

Personally, I think we can do much better with off the
shelf electronics and you don't have to worry about your
contacts wearing out or the spark gap causing massive
radio interference.

Anthony

 



That's what you want? Relays and resistors instead of converters and
inverters?

May I ask why?

 

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 01:21:34 -0500, nospam.clare.nce@sny.der.on.ca

Hard to say, but lots of advances have been made in 26 years, so I'd
probably invest effort in a newer design if I was going to spend all the
time to build something...

 



I am just interested in how he did it, using , according to the
articla, a heater motor and a starter motor. I know there are better
ways of doing it today, it's the understanding of past technology that
turns my crank.

I built mine with diode/relay series/parallel switching and dropout
resisters back in the late seventies - about the same time Arthurs did
his.