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Re: Ball Lightning.

Tesla List wrote:
> 

<big snip>

> >
> > Bert,
> >         When I mean explode, I'm serious. The base wire of my backup
> > secondary coil was melted. The wire attached to the alligator clip was
> > soldered on and its melted. And parts of the alligator clip where
> > melted. The fire balls where green (I assume burning copper) and left
> > a white scorch mark on my concrete. I did not see a visible arc and
> > I don't seem to suffer alot of corona effects I've seen in other
> > coils.
> >         My coils are all heavily sealed with polyurethane. Including
> > my primary, with the 3/8" copper having 10 coats. And is also covered
> > with a flat peice of plexyglass. I don't want any strikes on my
> > primary circuit. The fire balls sizzled like a steak and I was running
> > two 9KV 120 Ma neons wide open at 2KW. The secondary coils are 4.5" dia.
> > PVC pipe Scedule 40. With 940 approx turns of AWG 24 magnet wire for
> > an inductance of 19.88988 mH. I have not grid dipped the two coils
> > attached to each other to find my resonate freq. The magnet wire is
> > copper of course. And the wire attached to the two coils was a peice
> > of 40 KV wire from C&H supplies (steels core), with alligator clips
> > on both ends. I was running a .04 uF capacitor bank.
> >
> > D. Gowin
> 
> Dan,
> 
> Thanks for the additional info! Sounds like you certainly had an
> interesting experience. From what you've described, it sounds like the
> fireballs contained copper, and my guess is that somehow you had a poor
> connection that overheated, starting an RF arc, which then vaporized a
> quantity of insulation and copper. Its not clear that the current levels
> alone from the bottom coil would ever be great enough to cause a 24 AWG
> wire to melt... Very odd!! However, if you were only getting "wimpy"
> sparks, the 2KW was being dissipated _somewhere_, and you may have also
> been out of tune.
> 
> Was your second secondary fairly distant from the first coil, and did
> either coil have a discharger on top? Any idea what primary frequency
> you were running at the time? Do you know the natural frequency of your
> unloaded coils? This _really_ sounds like an interesting experiment to
> try duplicating with a fire extinguisher nice and handy!   <|:?)
> 
> Anyone else have any ideas about what might have happenned??
> 
> Safe, but mysterious, coilin to ya!
> 
> -- Bert --

Bert,
	I setup my coil configuration to match my note book from the
night in question. The only fly in the ointment I can see is that I
don't know precisely how long the wire attachment to the other coil was
(added inductance). But it should be within an inch. I used the original 
and reattached another alligator clip to it. I also placed my toriod
atop 
the second coil.

Stats:
	Both secondary coils, 4.5" dia., 20" coil, AWG 24 magnet wire,
        PVC Schedule 40 pipe. Unloaded 378 KHZ resonate freq. Stray
        capacitance about 11 pF. With my old analog meters there both
        approximately equal. 19.88988 mH of inductance.

        Toriod 4" dia aluminum duct wrapped into a 13" dia donut.
        The free air capacitance is about 14 pF.

        Connecting wire with alligator clips 59" long. The original
        experiment had 60" (5 feet).

        Grid dipped this yeilded a resonate frequency of 180 KHZ. This
        would seam correct since the sum of the toroid capacitance,
        and the stray coil capacitance should yeild about 36 pF.

        I attached my primary tap to the end of the copper coil for
        a tap of 16.8 uH. According to my calculations it should be
        nearer to 20 uH for good tune.

        I cannot provide a good combined inductance of both of the 
        coils. my instrument measures approx 70 mH. I remeasured
        3 times.

Any Mega-coilers wanna try for basket balls.
D. Gowin