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Greg Leyh's big coil

Subject: 
        Greg Leyh's big coil
  Date: 
        Mon, 31 Mar 1997 21:00:03 -0600 (CST)
  From: 
        Bert Pool <bertpool-at-flash-dot-net>
    To: 
        tesla-at-pupman-dot-com


Wild Bill Emery and I and a couple of other people drove down to Austin,
Texas, to visit with Greg Leyh and to see his big coil in action at the
SRL
show.  Lot's of very weird spectators there (and some very weird SRL
people
too, I might add), some incredible pieces of mechanical wizardry, and
one
massive mother of a Tesla coil!  Some specs:  42 inches in diameter, 129
inches tall, wound with 8 gauge "locomotive" wire, 3 TPI.  Primary: 4.5
turns of 3/8 inch thick soft copper buss bar about three inches wide
(somewhere near 300 pounds!)  Input power is 30 kva and up.  We saw some
solid 20 foot+ sparks at this show, and I know Greg could have pushed it
way
beyond this.  Bill and I helped Greg rebuild a 60 kilojoule capacitor
bank
that was used in conjunction with this big Tesla coil.  The caps were
charged to full capacity and wires were run to large banks of
fluorescent
tubes arranged around and down the length of some 14 foot long two by
fours.
When the Tesla coil's sparks hit one of the light banks, about a zillion
amps of high voltage/current tore through the tubes and then through the
Tesla coil secondary to ground.  The flash of the big fluorescent tubes
discharging the big capacitor bank was incredible!  I've never seen an
array
of dozens of 10 foot fluorescent tubes blown up before - it was an
awesome
display of raw power.  Finally meeting Greg was the real highlight of
the
trip; he is one hell of a nice guy, and I learned a lot from him in the
8
hours I hung around.  I shot over 100 pictures of the coil, the rotary,
the
caps, the power supply, the sparks, heck I might have even got a shot or
two
of Greg himself! As soon as I get these pictures processed (I'm getting
triple prints and may have to sell my car to pay for all the processing)
I
will scan some of the better pics and post them to the image list.  For
those of you who have never been to an SRL event, it is something to
check
out, especially if Greg and his coil are going to be there.  

Greg, it's an awsome coil, and an incredible accomplishment.  Hope I can
equal or surpass its performance some day.

In desperation, Bert hastily built a Tesla coil out of parts torn from a
toaster, a microwave oven, and his wife's hair dryer. . .

Bert Pool
bertpool-at-flash-dot-net