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Astro-coil hits the road



Greetings everyone,

just a quick post to let you know that this past weekend the coil I have
been working on recently made it's first performance appearance with the
band Man or Astro-man?

The goal was to have it ready for the SXSW (South by Southwest) music
conferance in Austin, TX on thursday.

We had a show in the huge metrolpolis of Monroe, LA (due to the Layfayette
club originally scheduled burning down..and that was BEFORE we got there!
yikes) on the way leaving the lab in Atlanta, GA.

The unit fit very well in the road case, and traveled easily with 5" rubber
casters, in and out of the trailer was the only lifting. (Ugg)
Upon arrival in Monroe, we realized the venue would be way to small for
safe operation, and decided to run it between bands and after the show, in
the parking lot of the venue...(we also ran two 16mm projectors on the
walls of the venues with assorted space footage).
Time did't not allow for isolated ground (yikes), but for the power of this
system (15kv,120mah) we used the venue ground.
The coil ran very well, and only slight amounts of RF were noted back
through the venue PA..some slight noise was noticed on a reverb unit. The
biggest noise problem came from a single Fender amp that had reverb set to
10. But this was alot less than I expected.
Everyone at the show seemed to enjoy the coil, and we consider it a success.

Bad news at SXSW...we had only 10 minute to set up, and 10 minutes to tear
down for this show...so needless to say..we didnt get to run it in Austin.
But it was a great outing, and much was learned.

We have the Monroe show on video, and also photos...so we will be posting
them on the Man or Astroman? web site, in the tesla section soon.

A new primary coil config. is currently in order, and a new toroid to
replace the crushed one in transit (but it was just 4"dryer duct!)

All in all, a great success, and one heck of a time :)

Robert Del Bueno