Hi,

Just went out for a night ride on the bicycle and had the chance to try
a little experiment on the dynamo. Previously I had measured the
inductance of the dyno at 4.2milliHenry. With a 12 ohm load at 6 volts
the critical capacitance was about 29uF which gave a little less than a
3db rise in voltage at resonnance on the circuit simulator. However the
cir. sim. voltmeter showed an increased lamp voltage of about 200
millivolts over a wider range of frequencies (i.e. rpm). Since I didn't
have a 33uF nonpolar cap handy I used a 50uF cap instead. The circuit
sim didn't show much difference except for the resonnant frequency.

Well, the actual road trial was interesting in what I perceived both in
with my eyes and with my leg muscles. The first thing I noticed was that
there seemed to be a sort of flywheel effect which wasn't there without
the capacitor. I suppose that in theory the capacitor would be trading
power with the inductance in the dynamo but it seems the energy also
came back to the wheel. It felt, at times, as if the dynamo was driving
the wheel. Maybe it was my imagination...

The other effect I noticed was that the lamp came on full brightness
from a slower speed and it seemed to be a more constant level. Without
the capacitor the lamp would get brighter as the bicycle's speed
increased and would just keep getting bright the faster I went. However
with the capacitor the lamp brightness seemed full-on from a slower
speed and then stayed constantly bright instead of getting slowly
brighter.

Of course this is all subjective but I think I'm going to leave the
capacitor in for a while longer and get a better feel for what is
happening. At the very least it seemed to make pedaling a little easier.
Maybe I'm taking a little example from electric power companies which
strive for unity power factor for the power savings.

 Mike
 ****

... Dunno if we'll get that past the CSA und UL 'owever.
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30