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TCBOR Teslathon report

Well, I attended Richard Hull's Teslathon this past weekend, and it was a
real blast.

I went down a day early on Friday with Barry, a fellow member of the Tesla
Coil Builders of Maryland, and we visited the Grande Junquetion Surplus
store in Virginia Beach that Richard is always talking about.  The array
of stuff was amazing - optics, electronics, magnets, hardware, equipment,
instrumentation, caps - practically anything neat you could think of was
packed in there somewhere.  We wandered around the store for about 2
hours, and every time I went down an aisle, I saw things that I hadn't
seen before. There was certainly a vast array of stuff, and most of the
prices seemed reasonable - a bit more than what you would typically pay
for the stuff at hamfests, but still way below regular retail prices.

We got stuck in traffic coming back across the bridge from Virginia Beach
to Richmond, and we pulled up at Richard's a little after 6:00 PM.  When 
we got there, a bunch of coilers were standing around talking, and Ed
Wingate was selling .06uF and .035uF Maxwell pulse caps hand-over-fist out
of the trunk of his car (talk about a buying frenzy!).  Before we all went
to dinner, Ed had sold 24 of the 30 caps that he had packed into his car
(I think the rest made it to the Teslathon the next morning, but they
didn't last long at Ed's prices).

After a hearty "group" dinner on Friday evening, there was an informal get 
together at Richard's lab.  The whole flock of us early-birds got a great
showing of Richard's 11" long magnifier throwing 100+ inch sparks at just
about 8kVA.  The water-arc gun was also demonstrated, as were some of the
electrostatic motors and experiments that Richard has been talking about
on the list.

The next morning dawned crisp and clear, and after a 7AM group breakfast
at Denny's with Richard and most of the other early arrivals, Barry and I
trekked over to the famed TCBOR Salvage Yard.  There was literally stuff
everywhere!  Most of it seemed to be from power companies, with BIG line
fuses, interrupters, insulators, machinery, motors, scrap metal, etc...
all over the place. Along with the BIG stuff that would have taken a
flat-bed truck to move, there were palettes and boxes of smaller fuses, 
CT's, SCR's, circuit boards, cable cutters, radios, and just plain junque.
I fell in love with a beautiful 8' brown ceramic insulator, but since I
only had my 1/2 ton pickup and no spare springs, I had to pass it up.

After scrounging around the yard for a while, I ended up with a pile of
stuff that included a nice 30A 240V variac in a really filthy, beat-up
metal box, some large (2' diameter, ~50lb each) toroidal current
transformers, a bunch of smaller CT's, a 3' long tubular tuned something
or other, a bunch of aluminum signs, some large 700W light bulbs, a
handful of large SCR's, a hand-held cable cutter, and a few other
miscellaneous items.

The total damage? $33!

Barry also picked up some other items, but his buy of the day was a nice
1.5kVA potential transformer for $10.

After the yard, we returned to the Teslathon at about 10:00 to find things
already hopping.  People were milling about, buying and selling all sorts
of neat high voltage stuff, talking, and generally having a good time.  As
the day progressed, we were treated to some beautiful gasseous tube 
displays, a demonstration of the glass-blowing techniques used to make
neon tubes, a small solid state Tesla coil that put out 3" or 4" sparks
and made the most annoying, shrill noise I've heard in a long time (almost
like scraping your fingernails along a blackboard), Richard's magnifier,
water-arc explosions, electrostatic motors run by a small Tesla coil, 
radioactive meters and carnival glass, mercury glow tubes, a late night
xray demonstration with a small veterinary xray machine and the xray 
screens that I have for sale at very reasonable prices (hint, hint), fun
with electrometers and more electrostatic tricks, and God only knows what
else I missed while I was talking with other people, selling my stuff, or
walking around looking at all the neat stuff other people were selling.

All in all, a wonderful day of comraderie with a bunch of nice people who
all share the same passion, and a mind-expanding day of dinking around
with all sorts of really neat stuff!  Kudos to Richard Hull for an all
around great time!

Steve Roys.