1st experiments with new coil

To: tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com
Subject: 1st experiments with new coil
From: Tesla List <tesla-at-stic-dot-net>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 23:38:49 -0500
Approved: tesla-at-stic-dot-net
Subject:   1st experiments with new coil
  Date:    Mon, 21 Apr 97 06:58:51 UT
  From:   "William Noble" <William_B_Noble-at-msn-dot-com>
    To:   "Tesla List" <tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>


I decided to see how well the new coil pieces I had made worked.  Here
is the 
coil description

primary - 13 turns of 1/4 inch copper on 1/4 spacing starting with 6
inch 
inner diameter wound on plate acrylic

secondary - about 680 turns of 24 gague on 4 inch pvc with urethane

gap - 6 pieces of 1/2 inch copper pipe on .030 spacing, no forced air
yet

xformer - 15kv 30 ma neon

capacitor - .001 uf 27kv mica

input power - straight 110 AC, no variac

other - # 10 X3 stranded wire X 18 inches long (a piece of power cord
inside a 
neoprene outer sheath) is what I used to make the movable jumpper to go 
between the capacitor and the selected coil of the secondary.  A
"crocidile" 
clip rated 30 amps is what I used to connect to the tubing - I'll make a
more 
aesthetic special connector later.

I hooked it all up in the normal manner, with the primary grounded to a
piece 
of electrical counduit that runs underground for 40 feet, used all gap 
segments.  Tried the following configurations:

1. no capacitor on top of the secondary, just the piece of wire sticking
up - 
best performance at turn 7, next best at 13.  top turns of secondary
glowed, 
got about 1/2 to 3/4 inch brush discharge from end of wire, with many
small 
discharges from the piece of wire sticking up.  With the bottom of the 
secondary about 4 inches above the primary I got no discharge, with the
bottom 
of the primary just below the secondary I got the small brush described
above. 
 All other tests were run with the bottom of the primary just below the 
secondary - there was never arcover between primary and secondary.

2. plastic toilet float wrapped in foil on top of secondary - best
performance 
at turn 8, got 3 to 4 inch "lightning bolt" type blue discharges from
the 
threaded end of the float (where the foil was quite rough), could draw a
4 to 
5 inch arc to a grounded wire (didn't measure this carefully)

3. made a torroid from 4 inch aluminum dryer ducting - didn't quite have 
enough to close the torroid but decided to try it anyway.  No free air 
discharge - best arc drawn from turn 6.

all of the above runs were short runs (15 sec to a minute) because the
gap 
would heat up and the sparks would get shorter if I ran very long.

Now, I know that I need more primary capacitance - that will come when I
have 
time, and the gap got way too hot, so I'll need to redo it with larger
copper 
pipe and then finish up with some kind of air mover to get a decent
quench, 
and I'll need a real torroid some time.  So, the question to you-all is,
is 
the performance of this partially done coil consistant with what you
would 
expect????  I'm actually pretty happy that it did anything at all - This
is a 
10,000% improvement over my previous efforts (all thanks to reading this
list 
for a few months).  My inclination is to play with some oil capacitors
(7.5 kv 
units) that I have a pile of and see what happens, then when that is not 
satisfactory break down and make some like everyone else does.  
Comments????  
(and, thanks for the help to date - this is much cooler than total
failure)