Well, I got some time to read the paper, and I can see where ***** is coming from.

As to replicating the device: You could have a go at it if you wish to, but I believe you will find it is a very long project and leads you into many dark alleys.

***** really tries at understanding it, but he falls back on ether theory without getting it into modern physics. Tesla actually presaged the present view of the vacuum as a virtual state cauldron. He also found that sharp discharges did give him excess energy (not putting it into the present language of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, where sharp gradients are known and recognized to violate the second law of thermodynamics. And as Kondepudi and Prigogine state, not much is known about them (sharp gradients) either theoretically or experimentally.

So ***** in his experiments is actually messing with what John discovered and which we have slowly tried to congeal into more modern language and physics concepts than Tesla had available.

He sometimes evokes but does not understand the Bedini negative resistor or energy amplifier effect for negative energy, by resistive, inductive, and capacitive sections. ***** apparently is not well aware of the modern view of the vacuum as "holes" filled with real particles (i.e., as combined negative energy and positive energy coupled states". Sharp gradients such as strong, sharp pulse discharges decouple the states temporarily, thus causing the emission from space itself of both positive energy (real particles) and negative energy (as the temporarily persisting "holes" which act as source charges producing negative energy EM fields and potentials.

So ***** is certainly on the right track.

There is also other information on, e.g., production of hydrogen (i.e., production of protons) from the vacuum (from their Dirac Sea holes). Hal Fox has published some on that, in his "Journal of New Energy".

Anyway, the thing to experiment with, should you choose to go ahead, is SHARP GRADIENTS, DISCHARGES IN GASES, etc.

Unfortunately, like everything else, there are several "specialist" fields involved in such discharges, everything from the plasma guys to the "pulse" specialists, to particle physicists concentrating in high voltage discharges, etc.

I don't know of anything that truly coordinates all those various aspects into one coherent subject. So that is what you would be dealing with.

Nevertheless, such discharges DO involve and produce excess energy, and do violate the present second law.  So one can have success in the output results. The problem comes in when one tries to "understand" and "make sense" of the results -- and particularly what variables are causing them.

It won't be a short project for you, but will lengthen into some years. However, you can get some results fairly quickly, if you have a good man working on it. The problem, of course, is then to comprehend just what caused it, and why, etc.

Best wishes,

Tom