Re: conical secondaries

["Ed Phillips" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <M.J.Watts-at-massey.ac.nz>
> 
> On 25 Aug 00, at 21:53, Tesla list wrote:
> 
> > Original poster: "acmnovak" <acmnovak-at-email.msn-dot-com>
> >
> > What might the advantages of having a conical secondary be?
> > I'll be building a small coil with a conical coil, but I'm not sure what to
> > expect. Does it give better voltage gradient or what?
> > Thanks,
> > -Michael

	My nephew teaches Sience at San Diegtos (sp?) High School near San
Diego.  He spices up his classes with such things as potato cannons and
construction of fairly large Tesla coils.  His students built a
"bipolar" coil a year or so ago which produced 6 foot streamers between
the terminals, using three 12 kV, 60 ma transformers and one of the
0.025 ufd capacitors which were brokered her a few years back.  (It
didn't blow up on him, thank god.)  By the way, when he started the TC
coil building about 10 years ago he wandered around San Diego visiting
sign shops and looking for NST's.  He finally found one shop which gave
him an essentially unlimited supply of the 12 kV, 60 ma jobbies.  All he
and his students had to do was take them out of old signs.  They didn't
find any shorted ones!  He gave me a few, about half with PF correction
and half without, and I have yet to blow up the one I have left.  (Will
probably do so next time I run...)

	Anyhow, they also built a 4' high conical coil.  Aside from being a
monument to patience and perserverence, it didn't work as well as a
solenoidal coil of the same inductance.

Ed