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Re: Coil Finished!

In a message dated 95-12-20 11:41:30 EST, tesla-at-grendel.objinc-dot-com writes:

>Well I finally finished my "high power" Tesla coil - about a year after I
>started making it! The secondary is 30 inches of wire wound on a 6 inch
piece
>of pvc pipe. A homemade toroid (as described by Richard Quick) measuring 20
>inches across sits on top of it. The  capacitance is 4 homemade roll
>capacitors (as described in Richard's notes) in a series parallel
>arrangement. Power is provided by two 15kV 60 mA neons in parallel.
>
>The secondary resonates at 174.3 kHz and I tuned the primary to the same
>frequency - I had to tap the primary out at about 10 and a bit turns. The
gap
>is a cylindrical gap (as described by, you guessed it - Richard Quick! ).
>
>When I turned the juice on and turned up the variac big purple sparks came
>shooting out of the toroid - I'm getting at least 3 foot of spark off the
>toroid and I'm sure that I would get more except that the spark can go no
>further as it hits the wall of the metal garage- I cant take the coil
outside
>as my driveway is very uneven. When the spark hits the metal of the garage
it
>turns from purple into a white hot spark and the safety gap fires. I also
>notice a lot of little sparks on the toroid - I think this may be where the
>metal tape is kinked up a bit - I guess I'll have to redo the surface of it
>again.
>
>No interference is generated by the coil in operation - there is no snow on
>the tv or anything - I guess this must be because my earth is pretty good -
>(two ground rods and a whole lot of copper flashing buried underground, also
>the ground has underground streams running under it which helps I bet). But
>just to be safe I always unplug all my 
>computer equipment.
>
>Even with the cylindrical gap the coil is still quite noisy in operation. I
>enjoy watching newbies jump at the sound when I turn it on! I haven't fine
>tuned the coil yet and I guess I'll wait until I take the coil to a bigger
>space so that I can really let it rip.
>
>At the moment I'm really pleased with how the coil is operating - amazing to
>see those lightning bolts jumping out of the toroid. However I already feel
>the beginnings of the Tesla curse i.e I'm already thinking about making
>bigger sparks and I'm going to check up on the availability of pole pigs
over
>here for sure. I cant wait to try one of Scotts commercial Tesla caps out on
>it.
>
>I'd like to thank Richard Quick, Jim Oliver and everyone else on this list
>for all the help you've given me-if it wasn't for you guys I'd still be
>playing with car ignition coils and thinking that 5 cm of spark is a
>"lighning bolt". Thanks!
>
>Best Regards and have a great xmas,
>Mark
>
>
>-- Mark

Mark,

Congratulations.  It sounds like a great system.  I know how much time and
effort you have put into the project.  It sure is nice to see such good
performance - right out of the box so to speak.  All your careful design and
planning certainly pay off in the end.

I know exactly how you feel.  Once you finally get it up and running and have
achieved performance as good or probably better than you expected, the mind
immediately starts to plan "More Power".

Ed Sonderman